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THE SPIRITS OF JUST MEN 
MADE PERFECT 



THE SPIRITS OF JUST MEN 
MADE PERFECT 

A STUDY 
OF 

THE INTERMEDIATE STATE 



BY 
JOHN ELLIOTT WISHART, D. D. 



£ ii % 



OBERLIN, OHIO 

BIBLIOTHECA SACRA COMPANY 

19 16 






Copyright, 1916, by 
BIBLIOTHECA SACRA COMPANY 



Printed in the United States of America 
Published, April, 1916 




The News Printing Company 
Oberlin, Ohio, U. S. A. 



mi -4 ibib 

?>C!.A427944 



10 



ACKNOWLEDGMENT 

I wish to thank several friends for suggestions 
and criticisms ; my brothers, Rev. W. I. Wishart, 
D.D., of Pittsburg, and Rev. C. F. Wishart, D.D., 
of Chicago ; two of my former instructors, Pro- 
fessor D. A. M'Clenahan, D.D., and Professor 
John M'Naugher, D.D., of the Pittsburg Theo- 
logical Seminary ; and two colleagues, Professor 
M. G. Kyle, D.D., and Professor J. HL Webster, 
D.D., of the Xenia Theological Seminary. I am 
under especial obligations to Professor Webster 
for a careful reading of the proof-sheets. 

John Elliott Wishart. 
Xenia, Ohio 
April 1, 1916. 



CONTENTS 



Chapter 




Page 


I. 


Introduction 


1 


II. 


Sources .... 


9 


III. 


The Fundamental Assertion 


17 


IV. 


Soul-Sleeping 


25 


V. 


The House Not Made with Hands 39 


VI. 


Crystallization in Character . 


51 


VII. 


Rewards and Punishments 


59 


VIII. 


The Vastness of Redemption 


69 


IX. 


Purgatory .... 


81 


X. 


The Spirits in Prison 




95 


XL 


Celestial Activity 




107 


XII. 


Progress 




119 


XIII. 


Social Relations . 




129 


XIV. 


Knowledge of Earth 




141 


XV. 


The Place of Glory 




153 


XVI. 


Retrospect 




161 



I 

INTRODUCTION 



Good, to forgive; 

Best, to forget! 

Living, we fret; 
Dying, we live. 
Fretless and free, 

Soul, clasp thy pinion! 

Earth have dominion, 
Body, o'er thee! 

Wander at will, 
Day after day, — 
Wander away, 

Wandering still — 

Soul that canst soar! 
Body may slumber: 
Body shall cumber 

Soul-flight no more. 

Waft of soul's wing! 

What lies above? 

Sunshine and Love 
Skyblue and Spring! 
Body hides — where? 

Ferns of all feather, 

Mosses and heather, 
Yours be the care! 



Browning. 



INTRODUCTION 

By established custom that period of the soul's 
history which begins with death and ends when 
it is once more united with the body at the resur- 
rection, is denominated the Intermediate State, the 
assumption being that it is a time of transition 
and in some sense of incompleteness, since the 
great consummation, when the redemption of the 
whole man will be perfected, is still in the future. 
The term itself is colorless and implies no dog- 
matic position as to what the condition of the de- 
parted during these intervening ages will be. To 
attempt to determine what may be known about 
the matter is the object of the present inquiry. If 
the limits of the subject are observed, one need 
not enter that vast field of New Testament Escha- 
tology, the center of which is the return of the 
Lord; for, as all agree, His coming terminates 
the Intermediate State, at least for the redeemed. 
Those controversies therefore which have divided 
Christians into the two camps of Pre-millennialists 
and Post-millennialists will not be touched upon. 



4 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

There are scholars who doubt or deny the res- 
urrection of the body and who hold that the con- 
tinued life of the soul is the essential fact set forth 
in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians and 
similar passages. According to this view, the 
spirit would at death enter at once upon its eternal 
condition, the ultimate boundary which marks the 
end of the first stage of the journey beyond the 
grave would disappear, and the term by which this 
part of the immortal career is usually designated 
would be inapplicable. 

We are not careful to answer in this matter. 
Indeed, most of the positions taken in this book 
would not be seriously affected if this contention 
were admitted. But suffice it to say that it denies 
one element of the hope of the gospel which has 
always been regarded as an important part of the 
faith of the church. From the time of Paul and 
before it, disciples who believed in the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus have insisted that it carried with it 
the resurrection of those whom He had redeemed. 
The Biblical conception is that body and soul 
together constitute the complete man and that 
both share in the blessings of grace. The idea 
that the material frame is a prison in which the 
spirit is shut up and from which it is a boon for 



Introduction 5 

it to escape, is Greek rather than distinctively 
Christian. This does not prove it false of course, 
but justifies us in demanding weighty reasons for 
accepting it in preference to that belief which has 
sustained saints and martyrs. 

The assertion of a literal resurrection of the 
body is indeed in some respects a hard saying, 
though the resurrection of Jesus is just as incred- 
ible from the naturalistic point of view, as is that 
of His ransomed people, and those who admit the 
one ought not to find the other an insuperable 
stumblingblock. But certain difficulties are admit- 
tedly great. The material frame mingles with the 
dust to which it is kin ; the particles of which it 
is composed may in process of time be scattered 
by wind or wave, may enter into the life of plants 
or animals, and may even become constituent parts 
of the flesh and bones of other human beings. If 
the form which is raised in glory must contain 
precisely the same atoms and molecules as that 
which was laid in the tomb, the problem would 
seem to be beyond solution. 

But we need not by excessive literalism make 
the doctrine more of an obstacle to faith than it 
is. Conditions in glory must differ widely from 
those which now surround us, and the new taber- 



6 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

nacle which the soul receives at the resurrection 
may be quite unlike the old. " It is sown in weak- 
ness ; it is raised in power : it is sown a natural 
body; it is raised a spiritual body." In trying to 
realize to ourselves the state of the blessed we 
sail on uncharted seas. But the finite spirit of 
man seems to require material means of self- 
expression. Here it must be clothed with flesh 
and blood. Whether it can dispense altogether 
with some such outward habiliments during the 
Intermediate State is questionable; but at least 
it is reasonable to suppose that at the resurrection, 
as the consummation of redemption, it will put on 
the raiment of a glorified body which it will recog- 
nize as the same which it wore while on earth, 
and that thus its blessedness will be made more 
complete than before. The one thing essential 
is that the sense of identity with the earthly frame 
be not lost. 

But that identity does not depend upon whether 
precisely the same atoms and molecules are pres- 
ent. A man of seventy knows that he is the same 
person physically and mentally as when he was a 
boy, but his limbs and members contain not a par- 
ticle of matter which belonged to the child. By 
this same sense of identity the resurrection body 



Introduction 7 

may be continuous with the body of our humilia- 
tion, in spite of the fact that this latter may for 
ages have moldered in the earth, or may have been 
scattered until its constituent parts could not pos- 
sibly be recovered. " The Scripture seems only 
to indicate a certain physical connection between 
the new and the old, although the nature of this 
connection is not revealed." x If this be the 
truth of the matter, the doctrine of a resurrec- 
tion is even on rational grounds entirely credible, 
and, as that event must mark a new point of de- 
parture in the history of the soul, it is no won- 
der that so much importance is attached to it in 
the New Testament. Accordingly the preceding 
period in the life of the departed, being incomplete 
and preliminary, may rightly be called the Inter- 
mediate State. 

1 Strong, Systematic Theology, p. 578. See also Charles 
Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. iii. pp. 775 ff.; R. H. 
Hutton, Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought, 
pp. 153 ff. 



II 

SOURCES 



When Lazarus left his charnel-cave, 
And home to Mary's house return'd, 
Was this demanded — if he yearn'd 

To hear her weeping by his grave? 

' Where wert thou, brother, those four days? ' 

There lives no record of reply, 

Which telling what it is to die 
Had surely added praise to praise. 

From every house the neighbors met, 
The streets were flll'd with joyful sound, 
A solemn gladness even crown'd 

The purple brows of Olivet. 

Behold a man raised up by Christ! 

The, rest remaineth unreveal'd; 

He told it not, or something seaPd 
The lips of that Evangelist. 

Tennyson. 



10 

■ 
■ 



II 

SOURCES 

The chief difficulty in a Biblical study of the 
Intermediate State arises from the meagerness of 
the information which the Scriptures give on this 
specific subject. In particular, the statements of 
the Old Testament about the life beyond the grave 
have long been regarded as a problem; partly in- 
deed because so little is said about the whole 
matter, but also because the view that is usually 
presented is so hopeless and gloomy. Continued 
existence after death, to be sure, is everywhere 
presupposed, but it is for the most part pictured 
as an existence feeble and poor and scarcely more 
than the shadow of real life. The inhabitants of 
Sheol are represented as joyless, weak, drowsy ; 
the honors and the humiliations of their children 
are alike unknown to them; though the interpre- 
tation of one or two passages is doubtful, in gen- 
eral no distinction in the earlier times seems to be 
drawn between the fate of the righteous and that 
of the wicked; and, worst of all, fellowship with 
God is denied to the shades. " For in death there 

11 



12 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

is no remembrance of thee: in Sheol who shall 
give thee thanks?" (Ps. vi. 5); "For Sheol can- 
not praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee : they 
that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy 
truth" (Isa. xxxviii. 18, marg.). 

On the other hand, the whole Old Testament 
breathes the atmosphere of immortality, for the 
saints lived as in the presence of God. And there 
are many passages in which the inspired writers 
recoil from the dark view of the hereafter which 
was common. It could hardly have been thought 
that Enoch and Elijah had been carried to Sheol. 
In the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, Forty-ninth and 
Seventy-third psalms the writers, filled with the 
sense of the nearness of Jehovah, refuse to admit 
that death itself can destroy that fellowship. Job, 
condemned by his friends and, as he thinks, by 
God Himself, rises on the wings of faith out of the 
very depths of despair, and asserts his confidence 
that he shall be vindicated beyond the grave. Eze- 
kiel prophesies a national resurrection; there are 
gleams of hope in Isaiah and Hosea ; and in Daniel 
a great awakening of those that sleep in the dust 
and a separation of the righteous and the wicked, 
is foretold. 

The difficulty can hardly be evaded, as some 



Sources 13 

seek to do, by taking the word " Sheol " in certain 
connections as a synonym for the grave, and ex- 
plaining these hopeless statements as referring to 
the condition of the body decaying in the tomb. 
That, in some descriptions of the underworld, 
features borrowed from the literal sepulcher are 
introduced, may readily be admitted. But the 
term seems to have had a well-understood mean- 
ing which must have been broad enough to cover 
all the cases in which it is used, and there are 
many instances in which the proposed rendering 
is impossible. 1 Jacob expects to go down to Sheol 
to his son, though he believes him to have been 
torn by wild beasts and left without the rites of 
sepulture ; the burial of the body is not infre- 
quently distinguished from the passage to the 
place of the dead ; the common formula " to go to 
one's fathers " is applied to those whose remains 
were not placed in the vaults of their ancestors, 
such as Abraham, Aaron, Moses, David; and in 
the powerful picture drawn in the fourteenth 
chapter of Isaiah the chief ones of the earth are 
represented as rousing themselves to mock the 
king of Babylon as he enters the domain of the 

1 Oehler, Old Testament Theology (Eng. Tr.), vol. i. 
p. 251. 



14 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

shades, weak as they. Surely Davidson * is right 
in saying that Sheol " is never in the Old Testa- 
ment confounded with the grave, although, being 
an ideal place and state, the imagination often 
paints it in colors borrowed from the grave and 
the condition of the body in death." 

The explanation of the paradox is to be found 
rather in the method by which God brings truth to 
men. Revelation is progressive. The doctrine of 
Sheol was a popular belief which in its main fea- 
tures was common to many of the ancient nations. 
Schwally 2 holds that these conceptions of the 
state of the dead were survivals of ancestor wor- 
ship. The religion of Jehovah found this old idea, 
so to say, in possession of the field. It grappled 
with it and finally overthrew it. But as the great 
need of the people was not so much to learn about 
the life to come, as to be trained for the service 
of God in the present life, which training is the 
best preparation for the world beyond, we need 
not be surprised that comparatively little teaching 
on immortality was given. The higher truths 
were certain in time to root out the old gloomy 
superstition. The really positive, constructive mes- 

x Job (Cambridge Bible Series), pp. 53-54. 
2 Das Leben nach dem Tode. 



Sources 15 

sage of the Old Testament on this subject, then, 
is to be found in those passages in which faith 
triumphs over these traditions and contradicts 
them. " This idea of death," says Davidson, 1 " is 
not strictly the teaching of revelation, it is the 
popular idea from which revelation starts, and 
revelation on the question rather consists in exhib- 
iting to us how the pious soul struggled with this 
popular conception and sought to overcome it." 
It is obvious then that Old Testament data re- 
garding the condition of the departed must be 
used with caution and discrimination. 

Even in the New Testament the teaching, within 
the limits of our theme, is by no means full. It is 
indeed asserted by Professor Salmond 2 that Christ 
is silent on the subject of the Intermediate State. 
All will admit that He nowhere in His discourses 
lifts the veil, nowhere directly answers the ques- 
tions that come to us as to the present condition 
of the dead; but it cannot be doubted that He 
taught the doctrine of the resurrection, and there 
are incidental references to the other world which 
must apply to the period before the resurrection, 

x Job (Cambridge Bible Series), p. 103. 

2 The Christian Doctrine of Immortality, pp. 277 ff. 



16 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

and whose force cannot, I think, be explained 
away by the fact that they are obiter dicta, or by 
the assumption, which may be true in a measure, 
that our Lord merely speaks the language of the 
Jewish eschatology of His time. 

In the other books of the New Testament, too, 
the statements which give us any help are few and 
obscure. The special reason for this is that the 
interest and hope of the primitive Christians were 
centered not on the Intermediate State but on the 
Second Advent. This latter was the object of 
their expectation and their longing; it was The 
Day. Their faith was like a telescope, focused 
upon the coming of the Lord which it brought 
very near, and intervening events were outside of 
the range of vision. We find, however, certain 
hints from which something may be learned ; and 
from all these sources we may obtain sufficient 
data to construct a fairly intelligible and consist- 
ent theory as to how it fares with the soul between 
death and the resurrection. 



Ill 

THE FUNDAMENTAL ASSERTION 



17 



I wage not any feud with death 
For changes wrought on form and face; 
No lower life that earth's embrace 

May breed with him can fright my faith. 

Eternal process moving on, 
From state to state the spirit walks; 
And these are but the shattered stalks, 

Or ruin'd chrysalis of one. 

Nor blame I death, because he bare 

The use of virtue out of. earth; 

I know transplanted human worth 
Will bloom to profit, otherwhere. 

Tennyson. 



18 



Ill 



THE FUNDAMENTAL ASSERTION 

The first question that confronts us with refer- 
ence to the Intermediate State is this : Does the soul 
during this period live on in intelligent conscious 
existence? In this query the very essence of the 
immortal hope is involved. We shrink from the 
very thought of sinking into nothingness. We 
long for life; even the centenarian has not had 
sufficient enjoyment of it to be satisfied with anni- 
hilation. But death separates soul and body; the 
material part of the man mingles with the dust; 
and the continued activity of a spirit, unclothed, 
no longer at home in its tabernacle of flesh, is 
something of which we have no experience; no 
voices from " the undiscovered country, from 
whose bourn no traveller returns," reach us. " How 
fares it with the happy dead ? " 

Certainly the ordinary representation of Script- 
ure is that life continues in spite of the dissolu- 
tion of the body. This is the general tone of reve- 
lation; the fact is usually assumed as if it needed 
no proof. Even in Old Testament times, Sheol, 

19 



20 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

according to the gloomiest conceptions of it, was 
a place of persistent though poor and shadowy ex- 
istence ; and all of those passages in which the 
saints in the strength of faith rose above the be- 
liefs of their times, and gave expression to the 
hope of immortality, in so far as they apply to 
the Intermediate State, are affirmations of this 
fundamental truth. Numerous statements in the 
New Testament are still more directly to the point. 
When Jesus says, "And I say unto you my friends, 
Be not afraid of them which kill the body, and 
after that have no more that they can do. But 1 
will warn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, 
which after he hath killed hath power to cast into 
hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him" (Luke xii. 
4-5; cf. Matt. x. 28), He draws a sharp distinction 
between the two sides of our natures, and affirms 
that the destruction of the material part does not 
mean the end of life. His words to Martha may 
be cited to the same effect, " Whosoever liveth and 
believeth on me shall never die" (John xi. 26a). 
He argued for the resurrection from the fact that 
God is called the God of Abraham, Isaac, and 
Jacob, adding the great assertion that he is not the 
God of the dead but of the living (Matt. xxii. 32; 
Mark xii. 26-27; Luke xx. 37-38) ; but Abraham, 



The Fundamental Assertion 21 

Isaac and Jacob were then, and still are, in the 
Intermediate State, and the argument is rather 
stronger against a denial of their conscious life 
than against a rejection of the resurrection; but 
it seems to be regarded as axiomatic that resur- 
rection is implied in living, and that where the 
one is the other will follow in its time. In the 
parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus this same 
truth is assumed as matter of course (Luke xvi. 
19-31). It underlies the lesson which is drawn 
from the parable of the Unjust Steward (Luke 
xvi. 9). ; And the statement to the thief on the 
cross, " To-day shalt thou be with me in Para- 
dise " (Luke xxiii. 43b) is decisive. 

Outside of the Gospels the like teaching emerges 
again and again. The first martyr meets death 
with the prayer, " Lord Jesus, receive my spirit " 
(Acts vii. 59b). The writer of the Epistle to the 
Hebrews speaks of " them who through faith and 
patience inherit the promises" (Heb. vi. 12), and 
of "the spirits of just men made perfect" (Heb. 
xii. 23c). Moreover, certain utterances of Paul 
give proof which cannot well be disputed that he 
and the primitive Christians believed that the sep- 
aration of the soul from the body does not mean 
the cessation of thought and consciousness. To the 



22 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Corinthians he writes that to be at home in the 
body is to be absent from the Lord; expresses a 
wish to be absent from the body and to be present 
with the Lord; and affirms that it is his ambition, 
in whichever of these two states he is found, to be 
well-pleasing unto Him (2 Cor. v. 6ff.). To the 
Philippians he says, " To live is Christ, and to die 
is gain. ... I am in a strait betwixt the two, having 
the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is 
very far better" (Phil. i. 21 ff.). And to the 
Thessalonians he declares that Jesus " died for us, 
that, whether we wake or sleep, we should live 
together with him" (1 Thess. v. 10). Such lan- 
guage means nothing less than that the Interme- 
diate State is for the isoul a period of intelligent 
spiritual activity. 

If it seem strange that this fundamental doc- 
trine must be drawn largely by inference from 
passing statements thrown off in the discussion of 
other themes, it should be remembered that there 
is almost no direct teaching about conditions be- 
tween death and resurrection in the New Testa- 
ment, for the reason that the gaze was fixed far- 
ther on. The goal of hope and effort was the 
coming of the Lord and the resurrection. But 
more than this, it is doubtful if it ever occurred to 



The Fundamental Assertion 23 

the inspired penmen that the continued existence 
of the soul beyond death needed to be asserted 
and proved. Those who had the most hopeless 
outlook upon the hereafter in Old Testament 
times seem never to have contemplated the possi- 
bility of utter annihilation beyond the grave. If 
the denial of angels and spirits among the Sad- 
ducees carried such an implication, their views 
had no influence with the disciples of Jesus. This 
affirmation which lies at the center of the immor- 
tal hope is assumed without argument, and herein 
is the strongest sort of indication as to what was 
the belief of the early church. Indeed, for those 
who hold that death does not end all, there would 
seem to be only one possible alternative view, 
namely, that the soul sleeps in unconsciousness 
until the resurrection; and to this theory we must 
devote some attention. 



IV 
SOUL-SLEEPING 



25 



Duncan is in his grave; 
After life's fitful fever, he sleeps well; 
Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison, 
Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing, 
Can touch him further. 

Shakespeare. 



26 



IV 



SOUL-SLEEPING 

From very ancient times there have been some 
who have held that the spirit rests in slumber until 
the body is called from the grave, the view being 
early given the name Psychopannychia — the soul's 
night-long sleep. It was maintained by certain 
sects in the period of the Reformation, notably 
the Anabaptists, and John Calvin's first theolog- 
ical work, " De Psychopannychia," was a refuta- 
tion of it, written in his usual masterly manner. 
But it seems to have been accepted, at least for a 
time, by Luther, who, when John, Elector of Sax- 
ony, died at the close of a hunting expedition, re- 
marked, " Our good prince expired like an infant, 
without trouble or fear, and when he awakes at 
the last day, he will imagine that he has just come 
home from the forest." 1 Since the Reformation, 
though it has always failed of general assent, it 
has been espoused by some most orthodox theo- 
logians ; among others by Francis Gaussen, of 

1 Quoted by David Smith, D.D., in the British Weekly, 
April 10, 1913, and April 16, 1914. 

27 



28 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Geneva, author of " Theopneustia," a defense of 
verbal inspiration. " My friend Gaussen," wrote 
Erskine, of Linlathen, " holds that the spirit is in 
a state of total insensibility from the instant of 
death until the instant of the general resurrection. 
The interval between death and judgment is in this 
way annihilated for them. The eye is closed, and 
instantaneously opened to behold the Savior de- 
scend from heaven with clouds and great glory." 1 
One of the ablest presentations of this theory is 
made by Archbishop Whately, in his book on the 
" Future State," though he is not an out-and-out 
advocate of it. Quite recently Professor David 
Smith, D.D., of Londonderry, has, in letters in the 
British Weekly, shown that there is something to 
be said for the hypothesis, but is " by no means 
prepared to accept " it. It has thus been the be- 
lief of a few during the ages but has never been 
the common faith of the church. 

One consideration upon which Archbishop 
Whately and others lay great stress is this : that 
as the soul, according to this supposition, will be 
entirely unconscious throughout the Intermediate 

State, there will be no long waiting for the final 

x The British Weekly, April 10, 1913, and April 16, 
1914. 



Soul-Sleeping 29 

consummation ; it will fall asleep at death and the 
awakening at the resurrection will seem to occur 
at the next moment, for the intervening time will 
be annihilated. This fact, if it be a fact, is thought 
to be consonant with those passages in which the 
coming of the Lord is kept before Christians as 
the goal toward which they are to strive and the 
era when their salvation will be complete. It is 
urged too that the shrinking from the dreamless 
slumber of the grave, the reluctance to enter into 
a long period characterized by the cessation of 
thought and activity, are unreasonable, since in 
the actual experience of the individual there will 
be no such period, however wearily time may pass 
for those that are alive. 

It is doubtful, however, whether such arguments 
will satisfy hearts that hunger for life and cannot 
bear the thought of. leaving it — and that means 
all hearts. 

" Tis life, whereof our nerves are scant, 
O, life, not death, for which we pant; 
More life, and fuller, that I want." 1 

Disguise the fact as we may, the sleep of the soul 
must imply the interruption of life during the 
1 Tennyson, " The Two Voices." 



30 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

period of its continuance. And so the old patri- 
archs who " looked for the city which hath the 
foundations," have not yet found it, for they lie 
in their sepulchers, lost, during these long cen- 
turies, to all thought and feeling, though Jesus 
argued that they must be living. Moses and Eli- 
jah must have escaped the common destiny, or 
else were called from their long rest to appear 
with the Lord on the Mount of Transfiguration. 
The apostles, the saints, the martyrs who endured 
persecution and defied death in the confidence that 
those who believe in Jesus can never die, have 
sunk into absolute nothingness. The theory as- 
serts the annihilation of the soul for a time ; and, 
on any showing, the affirmation that this fate 
awaits us is a hard saying. 

The consideration that the dead are not con- 
scious of the long delay, and that the resurrec- 
tion when it comes will seem to them instantly to 
have followed death, is comforting only because 
it means that life will be the end of this long dis- 
solution. It does not reconcile us to the loss in 
the intervening eons. It is poor consolation to 
be told that we shall not realize that we are miss- 
ing anything. By reasoning of the same sort we 
might attempt to deaden the pain of an entire 



Soul-Sleeping 31 

abandonment of the hope of immortality. If death 
ends all we shall never know it, and there will be 
no disappointment. Cicero expresses grim satis- 
faction in the thought that if he errs in believing 
that the soul lives on, he need not fear that dead 
philosophers will laugh at his error. It is life 
that we crave ; and a cessation of life, even though 
it be only temporary, is an unspeakable depriva- 
tion, the poignancy of which is not alleviated by 
the fact that there is no one to feel it. It is that 
fact that constitutes the loss. 

But a further plea urged in favor of this view 
of the hereafter is that it helps us to deal with cer- 
tain problems relating to the life beyond. The 
separations caused by death, the possible failure 
of the saved to meet those whom they loved be- 
cause these did not love the Master, the survival 
of memory and with it the longing for fellowships 
that are gone beyond recall — about these things 
many questions occur to us which we cannot an- 
swer. It is alleged that some of the difficulties 
are removed if it be true that the dead sleep in 
unconsciousness and know not the fate of their 
friends. This contention may be readily admitted, 
so far as the Intermediate State is concerned. Joy 
and sorrow, memory and thought and purpose, 



32 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

will be no more. For all that, the theory does not 
relieve us of perplexity, since the same apparent 
obstacles to happiness must be encountered at the 
resurrection, unless it be supposed that all will 
awaken to blessedness, and that the full number 
of those whom the saints have loved and lost a 
while will be brought with them into glory. The 
hypothesis does not solve these hard problems ; it 
simply defers them to a later era. 

But the main reasons alleged in favor of this 
theory are yet to be considered. The first of 
these is that death is so often called a sleep. This 
is indeed the common usage in the New Testament 
and is frequently to be found in the Old Testa- 
ment as well. The question is whether the ex- 
pression is to be interpreted literally. 

It is a figure of speech which occurs in almost 
all literature, having its origin doubtless in the 
physical resemblance of the dead to the sleeping. 
It did not imply the annihilation of thought and 
feeling, even on the lips of the Greeks ; and cer- 
tainly involved no such inference when the He- 
brews spoke of those who had gone down to 
Sheol, where, though the life was feeble and list- 
less, the person was never thought to have ceased 
to exist. This common simile seems to have been 



Soul-Sleeping 33 

elevated by our Lord into a sort of affirmation 
that, for the Christian, life does not cease at death 
and that a glorious morning is coming. This must 
have been His meaning when He said, " The child 
is not dead, but sleepeth " (Mark v. 39 and par- 
allels). With the disciples, especially the apos- 
tle Paul, this is a favorite euphemism. They seem 
unwilling to use the old term with reference to a 
believer. That it was understood as an assertion 
rather than a denial of conscious existence is 
certainly proved by such language as this, " Who 
died for us, that, whether we wake or sleep, we 
should live together with him" (1 Thess. v. 10). 
This thought was taken up by the church ; it is 
embalmed in devotional literature and hymnology ; 
and even among us the burial ground is called a 
cemetery — a sleeping-place. It may then be con- 
fidently asserted that this language justifies a con- 
clusion directly opposed to that which it is cited 
to support, for sleep means that life has not ceased, 
and that " dreams may come." 

The other great argument for this hypothesis 
is based upon the dependence <of the soul on the 
body. We have no experience of any method of 
self-manifestation for the spirit other than through 
a material frame. In certain physical diseases 



34 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

consciousness seems to be interrupted or at least 
reduced to a very low ebb. An abnormal condi- 
tion of the brain usually produces an abnormal 
condition of the mind. The removal of certain 
parts of the brain may involve the loss of certain 
powers of the mind. And so it is contended that 
" we have no experience and can form no concep- 
tion of conscious mental activity in a disembodied 
state." 

No one can dispute that the hypothesis of a pure 
spirit, stripped of its clothing of flesh and blood, 
which yet continues to think and act, carries us 
beyond our present experience. To assert that 
it is unthinkable or impossible is to make our pres- 
ent experience the norm of all being for all time. 
If it be contended that thought, feeling, and will 
are functions of the brain, we must ask in what 
sense the expression is used. 

The late Professor James, who approached the 
subject from the point of view of the anatomical 
psychologist, has shown that it is not necessary 
to think of this function as productive ; that it may 
well be permissive or transmissive. He likens the 
brain to the prism which does not produce light, 
but transmits it and gives it form and color; to 
an opaque dome, which at certain times and places 



Soul-Sleeping 35 

grows less so, and allows the solar beams to pene- 
trate to the sublunary world. 1 A similar view is 
advocated by Professor Schiller. 2 This most rea- 
sonable account of the relation of the material and 
spiritual sides of human nature is confirmed by 
the phenomena of thought transference and of the 
apparitions of the dying, which seem to indicate 
a certain degree of independence in the higher 
sphere even here. There are many cases in which 
some power of the mind, lost by injury to a cere- 
bral tract, has been regained, though the physical 
defect has not been repaired, as if the soul had 
trained another section of the " gray matter " to 
do the work. Says Professor Schiller, " If, as 
sometimes happens, the man, after a time, more 
or less, recovers the faculties of which the injury 
to his brain had deprived him, and that not in con- 
sequence of a renewal of the injured part, but in 
consequence of the inhibited functions being per- 
formed by the vicarious action of other parts, the 
easiest explanation certainly is that, after a time, 
consciousness constitutes the remaining parts into 
a mechanism capable of acting as a substitute for 
the lost parts." 3 This point is argued at length 

1 William James, Human Immortality, pp. 14 ff. 

2 Quoted by James, IMd., pp. 66 ff. 

3 Cited by James, IMd., p. 68. 



36 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

by Dr. William Hanna Thomson, in his book, 
" Brain and Personality," and the facts of ana- 
tomy there adduced surely admit of no other in- 
terpretation than that the man uses the brain, 
and even fashions the brain for his use. If this 
explanation of the connection between the phys- 
ical and the spiritual in us be the true one, if it 
be the fact, not that the cerebral tissues produce 
thought but that the mind thinks by means of 
these, what right have we to assert that the spirit 
cannot in some other sphere dispense with the use 
of this medium of communication or perhaps find 
another and fitter instrument on which to play? 
Our very ignorance should forbid the attempt to 
decide under what conditions the soul may in the 
future manifest its life. Those who believe that 
there is a God who is pure spirit, and that man 
was made in His image, can hardly deny the pos- 
sibility of conscious personality without bodily 
form. 

On the other hand, it is difficult to understand 
what possible condition is implied in the concep- 
tion of the sleep of the soul. It would seem that 
we have no experiences analogous to it here; for, 
though the stream of consciousness may run very 
low, it is doubtful if, even in sleep or disease, it 



Soul-Sleeping 37 

entirely ceases to flow. But according to this 
hypothesis it must be supposed that at death all 
thought and feeling and purpose end for a time. 
Now if, with some psychologists, we say that 
states of consciousness constitute the essence of 
the soul and " are all that psychology needs to do 
her work with," x it is manifest that the cessation 
of these states means the annihilation of the per- 
sonality. But if, as most of us believe, the spirit 
is more than its activities, if there is an Ego which 
lies back of thought and feeling and purpose, and 
is their source and bond of unity, the result is not 
very different. The mind is an immaterial, unex- 
tended thing. What is there left of an Ego that 
cannot know or act? What is an unconscious 
consciousness? The theory is at bottom the asser- 
tion of the destruction of the being during the 
Intermediate State ; what it postulates is a tem- 
porary sinking into nothingness. In reality all the 
great arguments in favor of immortality are argu- 
ments against such a position. 

Barnes, Psychology (Briefer Course), p. 203. 



V 
THE HOUSE NOT MADE WITH HANDS 



39 



Nor touch, nor taste, nor hearing hast thou now; 

Thou livest in a world of signs and types, 

The presentations of most holy truths, 

Living and strong, which now ; encompass thee. 

A disembodied soul, thou hast by right 

No converse with aught else beside thyself; 

But, lest so stern a solitude should load 

And break thy being, in mercy are vouchsafed 

Some lower measures of perception, 

Which seem to thee, as though through channels 

brought, 
Through ear, or nerves, or palate, which are gone. 
And thou art wrapped and swathed around in 

dreams, 
Dreams that are true, yet enigmatical; 
For the belongings of thy present state, 
Save through such symbols, come not home to thee. 
Newman, The Bream of Gerontius. 



40 



V 



THE HOUSE NOT MADE WITH HANDS 

To the man born blind the world of light and 
beauty is an unreality. He not only cannot see 
it; he does not know what seeing it could mean. 
The power of vision and the universe which it re- 
veals are outside his experience and beyond his 
conception. When forms and colors are described 
to him, he can only attempt to understand them 
by translating them into terms of touch or hear- 
ing or of some of the other senses. It is a realm 
into which he has not entered, and which, if he 
could enter it by the restoration of his sight, would 
be an undiscovered country in which all would 
have to be learned from the beginning. It would, 
however, be folly for him to make his experience 
the limit of all possible experience, and to say 
that there could be no such thing as a rainbow 
or a gorgeous sunset. 

A similar difficulty confronts us when we try 
to make real to ourselves the condition of the 
spirit in the Intermediate State; only, whereas in 
the one case the problem is to understand the use 

41 



42 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

of a faculty which one has never possessed, in the 
other case it is to conceive how knowledge and 
thought can remain when the organs upon which 
they are dependent in this life have perished with 
the material body. How can there be anything 
which corresponds to sight, when there are no 
eyes ; or to hearing, when there are no ears ? How 
can the soul learn anything regarding the external 
universe, when its medium of communication is 
gone? This is one of the most perplexing ques- 
tions regarding the state of the departed, but it 
ought not to be an insuperable obstacle to faith, 
since, as all must agree, we are dealing with a 
subject on which earthly experience is insufficient 
to guide us. 

Bishop Martensen and others, including ap- 
parently Cardinal Newman, hold that the Inter- 
mediate State is a time peculiarly suitable for 
introspection; that the soul, deprived of the pow- 
ers of sense, withdraws into itself, living a life 
of meditation and contemplation ; that it is " in a 
condition of rest, a state of passivity," though it 
nevertheless lives a " deep spiritual life " ; 1 and 
that this inwardness, this aloofness, is appropriate 
to a period which is in some degree imperfect 
Christian Dogmatics (Eng. Tr.), pp. 457 ff. 



The House Not Made with Hands 43 

and preparatory, awaiting the final consummation, 
when the spirit shall be united with the risen body 
and the man be made complete. Thus it will be a 
time of development, enhanced by separation from 
material things, in which the redeemed may make 
ready for the great judgment scene which shall 
usher them into the eternal blessedness. There 
may be some truth in this view, though Bishop 
Martensen, I suspect, bases his opinion partly upon 
Old Testament passages, which, being expressions 
of the ancient beliefs concerning Sheol, are doubt- 
ful guides in the matter. Cardinal Newman, it 
will be seen, does not conceive that the soul is 
entirely shut up within itself, and apparently 
Bishop Martensen would agree with him in this. 
This stage of the immortal career must be charac- 
terized by fellowship with Christ, as is taught in a 
number of passages, and that doubtless carries with 
it fellowship with those who bear His likeness. 
If the Kingdom of God is a social order, it would 
be strange if this higher reach of the Kingdom 
should be entirely individualistic. " Spirit with 
spirit can meet " ; and though we cannot under- 
stand the method by which disembodied beings 
can hold intercourse with one another or deal with 
the outer world, we have no right, because of the 



44 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

limitations of our knowledge, to deny the possi- 
bility of it. 

But there is an alternative supposition which, 
though it may be set down as mere conjecture, 
would relieve us from the necessity of affirming 
that, while awaiting the resurrection, the soul is 
entirely without bodily clothing. May it not be 
that it will form for itself, or be provided with, a 
covering suited to its condition during this trans- 
itional period? Whatever be the distinction be- 
tween the material and the spiritual world, the 
frame of flesh and blood in which we now sojourn 
would seem to stand between the two, having some 
of the qualities of each. Nevertheless it is of the 
earth, earthy; it is a muddy vesture of decay; and 
there must be finer clay than ours ; there must be 
degrees of suitability and perfection in the media 
through which the soul can come into contact with 
the outer world; it must be that the inner life can 
put on raiment which shall be more transparent 
and ethereal than that in which it is now enclosed. 
If the soul can, when one part of the brain fails it, 
train another part to do its bidding, it is not un- 
reasonable to suppose that when it leaves its worn- 
out tenement, it will at once find or form one of 
more exquisite mold. The imagination of men 



The House Not Made with Hands 45 

has always pictured ghosts as having bodies of a 
sort, diaphanous, invulnerable, but still real ; the 
theosophists hold that there is an astral body. Who 
knows whether there may not be a measure of 
truth in these wild fancies? 

It is assumed of course in this discussion that 
there will be a resurrection of the dead, ushering 
in the eternal state ; but the need of a resurrection 
may perhaps be questioned if it be held that the 
spirit will even before that great consummation 
have some sort of outer habiliments. It must be 
frankly admitted that we are dealing with matters 
of speculation rather than of certainty ; but it may 
well be that the change in this respect brought by 
the resurrection will be the equipping of the per- 
sonality with external means of expression which 
shall be finer and fitter for its purpose, and which 
shall at the same time be recognized as in a true 
sense identical with the flesh and blood of earth's 
sojourn. It may be only another step in the 
progress of the soul, an advance in the power and 
in the responsiveness of its embodiment. Surely 
in its whole endless career it will go on from 
strength unto strength; and it is not an irrational 
conjecture that this mortal frame shall at death 
give place to a purer, more spiritual tabernacle, 



46 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

which in turn shall at the resurrection be suc- 
ceeded by that body fashioned like unto His glor- 
ious body. 

The hypothesis is not a novelty. Bishop Bull 
suggests that the disembodied spirit may be able 
to perceive " by the help of some new subtler 
organs and instruments fitted to its present state, 
which either by its own native power given in its 
creation it forms to itself, or by a special act of 
the divine power it is supplied with." 1 Stier, 
dealing with the matter of a tongue and finger in 
Hades, explains that it is not said " in the sense 
of perfect corporeity, for that has been put ofT; it 
is not on that account, however, a mere figure, but 
indicates a certain corresponsive corporeity of the 
soul with which it is already and essentially in- 
vested." 2 Bishop Martensen holds similar lan- 
guage, " We must, therefore, entertain the idea 
of some sort of clothing of the soul in the realm 
of the dead; in that cloister-like (we speak after 
the manner of men), that monastic or conventual 
world." 3 To these citations may be added the 
following words of R. H. Hutton : " Professor 

Stokes believes that this individuality more or less 

1 Quoted by Dean Luckock, After Death, p. 34. 

2 Quoted, iHd., pp. 34-35. 
•Christian Dogmatics, pp. 460-461. 



The House Not Made with Hands 47 

evolves the bodily organization, and cannot be left 
without a bodily organization, even after our pres- 
ent bodily organization falls into ruin or decay. 
To him the body is a constituent element of the 
individual, which will express itself in another, 
perhaps a less imperfect body, so soon as the old 
body disappears. That is certainly the suggestion 
of revelation, and appears to be quite consistent at 
least with reason, not to say of something which 
looks rather like the beginning of experience." 1 

Such a theory would seem to give a natural in- 
terpretation to this statement of Paul, " For we 
know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle 
be dissolved, we have a building from God, a 
house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
For verily in this we groan, longing to be clothed 
upon with our habitation which is from heaven: 
if so be that being clothed we shall not be found 
naked. For indeed we that are in this tabernacle 
do groan, being burdened; not for that we would 
be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon, 
that what is mortal may be swallowed up of life " 
(2 Cor. v. 1-4). 

The explanation of this passage, which carries 

such a presupposition, is not indeed accepted by 
1 Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought, p. 152. 



48 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

most of the commentators, the usual opinion be- 
ing that the apostle, the center of whose hopes 
was the coming of the Lord, here in thought over- 
leaps the time between death and the resurrection, 
or, as others hold, having modified his views since 
he wrote the 'First Epistle to the church at Cor- 
inth, now believes " the resurrection to be the im- 
mediate sequel of departure from this life " ; x that 
the building from God, the house not made with 
hands, eternal in the heavens, is the risen and 
glorified body; and that the longing not to be 
unclothed, but to be clothed upon, and so not to 
be found naked, is an expression of the desire, so 
ardent among the early Christians, to live until 
the Master's appearance which seemed so near, 
and thus to escape death with the ensuing naked- 
ness of the soul. 

It is urged against the interpretation which has 
been proposed above that such a conception no- 
where else appears in the New Testament — an 
objection which is not very convincing, since 
passages which bear in any sense upon the In- 
termediate State are so extremely few ; and, fur- 
thermore, that the word " eternal " applied to the 

X R. H. Charles, Eschatology, Hebrew, Jewish and 
Christian, p. 400, 



The House Not Made with Hands 49 

house not made with hands, would seem to desig- 
nate something more permanent than an embodi- 
ment of the spirit for this transitional period only 
— to which it may be answered that the qualitative 
rather than the temporal signification would be 
exceedingly appropriate here. 

On the other hand it is, I think, generally agreed 
that when Paul speaks of the dissolution of the 
earthly house of our tabernacle, he has in mind 
the possibility of death before the Second Ad- 
vent. It would be natural then to understand by 
the building from God some provision for the 
housing of the soul immediately after this dissolu- 
tion, the newness of the conception being due to 
the fact that, looking forward as they do to the 
great consummation, the New Testament writers 
rarely refer to the intervening period at all. And 
the longing expressed in the following verses 
would be like that to which voice is given in Phil- 
ippians i. 23, " Having the desire to depart and 
to be with Christ, for it is very far better," — a 
longing, notwithstanding the inevitable shrinking 
of the flesh, to pass on into the other world, since, 
in spite of natural fears, it would not mean naked- 
ness, but a being clothed upon with the habitation 
which is from heaven. 



50 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Such an interpretation of the passage, though 
most of the authorities are against it, is in its 
essentials supported by some notable names, among 
whom may be mentioned Bishop Martensen, 1 ap- 
parently R. H. Hutton, 2 and the late Dr. Charles 
A. Briggs, who thinks that the reference here is 
to a body similar to that in which our Lord ap- 
peared after His resurrection. 3 On such a sub- 
ject one dare not dogmatize, but the hypothesis 
propounded is worthy of consideration as a possi- 
ble solution of one of the difficult problems con- 
nected with the life beyond the grave. 

1 Christian Dogmatics, p. 460. 

2 Aspects of Religious and Scientific Thought, p. 152, 
cited above. 

"The Messiah of the Apostles, p. 130. 



VI 
CRYSTALLIZATION IN CHARACTER 



51 



Once to every man and nation comes the moment to 

decide, 
In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for the good or 

evil side; 
Some great cause, God's new Messiah, offering each 

the bloom or blight, 
Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the sheep 

upon the right, 
And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that darkness 

and that light. 

Lowell. 



62 



VI 



CRYSTALLIZATION IN CHARACTER 

The next question is, whether the Intermediate 
State is one of separation on moral grounds, 
whether it is a condition in which the character 
has become fixed in good or evil. 

As is to be expected, the Biblical statements 
which refer specifically to this matter are few. 
The Old Testament gives us little light. In 
Daniel a sundering of those who sleep in the dust 
of the earth is predicted, but it is placed at the 
era of the resurrection (Dan. xii. 2). Professor 
Charles holds that in the Forty-ninth and Seventy- 
third Psalms Sheol " is conceived as the future 
abode of the wicked only," 1 and that a similar 
teaching emerges elsewhere. 2 But in general the 
old doctrine which in Israel was so like that of 
other nations made no clear distinction between 
the fate of the godly and the ungodly. 

In the New Testament, however, the evidence 
on the point in question, though fragmentary and 

1 Eschatology, pp. 74, 156. 

2 In Isa. xxiv. 21-22 and lxvi. 24, Ibid., p. 74. 

53 



54 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

incidental, is quite decisive. The parable of the 
Rich Man and Lazarus represents the former as 
separated by a great gulf from the place in which 
the latter enjoys the fellowship of Abraham. 
When the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
speaks of the departed as " the spirits of just men 
made perfect," he describes them as confirmed in 
holiness (Heb. xii. 23) ; and, on the other hand, 
when Judas is declared to have gone to his own 
place (Acts i. 25), the inference would seem to 
be that his character was such that only one place 
was suitable for him. Then if we keep in mind 
that holiness is necessary for the full enjoyment 
of God, we shall find other passages significant; 
such as that which describes the appearance of 
Moses and Elijah in glory with Jesus on the 
Mount of Transfiguration; the promise to the 
dying thief that on that same day he should be 
with the Master in Paradise; and Paul's state- 
ments that to be absent from the body was to be 
present with the Lord, and that to depart and be 
with Christ was very far better. 

Thus the Intermediate State will, it would 
seem, bring to full development tendencies which 
are already manifesting themselves in our lives. 
Here in this world men and women become more 



Crystallization in Character 55 

and more fixed in character as years pass. Con- 
versions occur for the most part in youth, and 
those who turn to God after they have passed the 
meridian of their earthly day are comparatively 
few. There are some whose moral natures, it is 
to be feared, have, even in this present period 
of probation, become crystalized in evil, and this 
fact may perhaps be the key to the solemn wOrds 
of Jesus about the sin against the Holy Ghost 
(Mark Hi. 28-29 and parallels). On the other 
hand, one not infrequently meets on life's com- 
mon way saintly souls who, while not faultless, 
seem to live habitually in the heavenly places, and 
are simply incapable of the baser and more pre- 
sumptuous sins. Humanity is already divided into 
two great classes ; and as time flows on it becomes 
harder to pass from the one to the other, though 
nothing is impossible to divine grace, and many 
a hoary-headed sinner is at last won by redeem- 
ing love. 

If it be true then, as here maintained, that in 
the Intermediate State the moral natures of the 
departed are permanently fixed in good or evil, it 
must be supposed that the great crisis of exper- 
ience which brings this result occurs as the soul 
leaves the body. What is there in the mere fact 



56 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

of death, it may be asked, which could so vitally 
affect the eternal issues of life? Perhaps the sep- 
aration of the material from the immaterial need 
not of itself lead to any such outcome, but we 
may well conjecture that the final hour is a time 
of supreme and irrevocable decision. The exper- 
iences of the last moments of earth are of course 
unknown to us, but many who have returned from 
the very borderland, perhaps barely rescued from 
drowning, tell of recalling the whole course which 
they had traveled in this world. It may be that 
the evil and the good are placed before the dying 
eyes in a clearer light than ever before, and that 
infinite mercy presents its most urgent invitations. 
It would seem probable indeed that the choices 
which have become habitual will usually be con- 
firmed; but deathbed repentances, if rare, are not 
impossible — nay, may be far more frequent than 
we think. Often when men have to face their 
inevitable end, as in the disaster to the Titanic, 
the nobler side asserts itself in them, and, for 
aught we know, at such times vast multitudes 
take the kingdom of God by violence. Since, 
then, our daily choices are constantly determining 
our characters and our destinies, it is not unrea- 
sonable to suppose that the issues of life head up 



Crystallization in Character 57 

at its close in a full and final offer of grace, and 
that the choice which is then made is divinely con- 
firmed through complete establishment in holi- 
ness, or through abandonment to the evil which 
the soul has made its good. 

To some this idea that death is the decisive 
crisis in the spiritual history of each individual 
seems absurd, and they cannot accept the sup- 
position that perfection is won by a crisis. But 
if we assume that the condition of the blessed is 
one of sinlessness — and that is the Scriptural 
view — we presuppose an immeasurable change 
from our condition here, of which we must give 
some account. From imperfection, even the im- 
perfection of the greatest saint, to spotless holi- 
ness — this is an enormous step, which, to a con- 
science sensitive to the failures of our best 
service, must seem little less than infinite. That 
change must have come about either by crisis or 
by evolution. Both processes are at work in the 
world; but if this unparalleled transformation act- 
ually has taken place in the spirits of just men 
made perfect when they enter the regions of 
glory, it must have been by crisis, and that crisis 
must have come as they passed through the val- 
ley of the shadow of death. Now the history of 



58 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

conversions gives evidence that the new starts in 
life, the transfigurations of dull and commonplace 
souls, are rather more frequently sudden and 
climacteric, than the results of slow and gradual 
development, though the forces which win the 
victory may for a long time have been gathering. 1 
It would not be a psychological anomaly to sup- 
pose that a tremendous crisis must occur before 
the spirit attains the likeness of God, and no time 
could be so fitting for that crisis as when the clay 
tabernacle is being put off and the higher career 

is just beginning. 

1 Many cases are cited in James's Varieties of Re- 
ligious Experience; see also on the whole subject an 
article by Prof. H. R. Mackintosh in The Expositor, 
vol. vii. (8th series), pp. 427 ff. 



VII 
REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS 



59 



My Sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my 
Pilgrimage, and my Courage and Skill to him that can 
get it. My Marks and Scars I carry with me, to be a 
witness for me that I have fought his Battles who now 
will be my Rewarder. ... So he passed over, and all 
the Trumpets sounded for him on the other side. 

Bunyan, Death of Valiant-for-Truth. 



60 



VII 

REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS 

If the Intermediate State is a condition of crys- 
tallization in character and of separation upon 
the basis of it, it must also be, in some perhaps 
incipient form, a condition of rewards and pun- 
ishments ; the entrance to it must be a sort of 
preliminary judgment. Most of the Biblical pas- 
sages referred to in the preceding chapter may 
be adduced in support of this advanced position. 
To refer again to the parable of the Rich Man 
and Lazarus ; the beggar is carried to Abraham's 
bosom, and Dives lifts up his eyes in Hades ; the 
one is comforted and the other in anguish. The 
dying thief is given a promise of fellowship with 
the Lord in Paradise, a place of which Paul 
speaks as situated in the third heaven, 1 which ex- 
pressions, whatever popular conceptions lay back 
of them, certainly do imply unmeasured blessed- 
ness and glory. The apostle's assertion that to 

be absent from the body is to be present with 
1 Seven heavens are described in 2 Enoch, and re- 
ferred to elsewhere. 

61 



62 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

the Lord, and that to depart and be with Christ 
is very far better, compels the same inference. 
To these may be added a verse from the Revela- 
tion, "And I heard a voice from heaven saying, 
Write, Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord 
from henceforth : yea, saith the Spirit, that they 
may rest from their labors ; for their works fol- 
low with them" (Rev. xiv. 13). On the darker 
side, there is a very significant reticence in the 
statement that Judas had gone to his own place. 
And the words, " It is appointed unto men once to 
die, and after this cometh judgment " (Heb. ix. 
27), though they probably refer to the scene be- 
fore the great white throne, mean that " imme- 
diately succeeding upon death, if not in time, yet 
in consequence, follows judgment." 1 

As to the nature of these rewards and punish- 
ments little is said, and speculation is of slight 
profit. But if the Scriptures teach, as they seem 
to do, that the essence of blessedness even in this 
preliminary stage of the life beyond the grave is 
fellowship with God in Christ, while the essential 
element in the punishment of the wicked is ban- 
ishment from Him whose love has been rejected, 

1 Marcus Dods, Expositor's Greek Testament, in loco. 
Of course Eccles. xi. 3, though often quoted in this 
connection, has no bearing on the question. 



Rewards and Punishments 63 

they present a conception which is extremely rea- 
sonable in itself and which indicates that these 
rewards and punishments are in kind, if not in 
degree, the same as those of the eternal state. 
Communion with the Father is heaven begun and 
in its fullness must be heaven attained. It was 
this that was to the Old Testament saints the 
stepping-stone to the greatest heights that their 
thought reached concerning immortality. It is 
enough if one can affirm of the departed, 

" For all was as I say, and now the man 
Lies as he lay once, breast to breast with God." * 

There are, to be sure, difficulties connected with 
this supposition, some of them being of consid- 
erable weight. One of the most serious is thus 
stated by Professor J. Agar Beet, " If happiness 
or woe follow death immediately, a great assize, 
hundreds of years after death, would be unmean- 
ing: yet throughout the New Testament the re- 
ward of the righteous and punishment of the 
wicked are said to be, not at death, but simulta- 
neously at the Great Day." 2 That fixation in 
character and the bestowal of rewards and pun- 

1 Browning, "A Death in the Desert." 

2 The Last Things, p. 17. 



64 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

ishments in accord with it, amount to a judgment, 
must be conceded. But even the final decisive 
scene, whatever else it may mean, will, we must 
suppose, be chiefly a proclamation of results in 
the spiritual world which have long been mani- 
fest, unless it be in the case of those who live until 
the end. Judicial decisions and sentences in the 
moral realm can be little else than announcements 
of the facts of the soul's condition, though the 
ground of the acquittal of the redeemed will 
assuredly be the grace of God displayed in the 
sacrifice of Jesus Christ. 

But assuming that most of the saved shall, for 
ages, have been enjoying bliss in the Intermediate 
State when the end comes, one can see reasons 
why the solemn adjudication, toward which New 
Testament writers look forward, should be de- 
ferred until the consummation of the age. The 
bestowal of awards in the first instance will be, 
so to say, private and personal ; in the second case 
it will be public and, as it were, official. The 
judgment at death will be individual; that which 
occurs at the resurrection will have a social aspect 
as well. And it is obviously appropriate that the 
latter should not occur until the body is called 
from the grave and reunited with the soul, so that 



Rezvards and Punishments 65 

the whole man may receive sentence according to 
" the things done in the body." 

Indeed, it is very easy to see that a last judg- 
ment upon the whole world could not take place 
until history was closed and all souls came 
into the presence of God. If every member of the 
human race is to stand before the great white 
throne, it will be after every member of the human 
race has finished his earthly course. Nor will it 
be possible, until that time, to sum up the results 
of any single life. The consequences of a deed 
or of a series of deeds do not cease with the death 
of the doer, but go on to the remotest generations. 
No life is so obscure as to be without influence, 
and in a very peculiar sense do the great men 
and especially the saintly men, such as Paul and 
Augustine, Francis and Bernard, Luther and Cal- 
vin, Edwards and Wesley, being dead, yet speak; 
for their works do follow them. Such lives are 
immortal even on earth while time lasts ; they 
create an " epidemic of nobleness " ; and not until 
the judgment is set and the books are opened, will 
it be possible to exhibit to the world in their most 
distant effects the far-reaching movements which 
they started. And what is true of these is true 
in lesser measure of all, the evil and the good. 



66 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Now the rewards of the blessed are of grace, but 
they are according to works ; it is necessary there- 
fore that the final verdict should be given only 
when time is no more and the harvest of every 
single life has been reaped. 

Another objection to the view herein presented 
is that there are whole classes of persons who can- 
not be supposed to have had the offer of mercy 
presented to them in an intelligible way or who 
must enter the Intermediate State with no oppor- 
tunity for development of character and growth 
in holiness, — infants, imbeciles, and the heathen 
to whom the gospel has not been preached. This 
difficulty, which in any case involves much mys- 
tery too dark to be penetrated by us without more 
light than we now possess, must be touched upon 
in connection with certain questions which will 
come up for consideration later. Meanwhile it is 
to be noted that if human history, human births, 
human sin, and human infirmity continue until the 
judgment day — and I suppose this is the accepted 
view — the same classes, or at least some of them, 
would come with as little preparation before the 
great assize, and the supposition that probation 
will not end until that supreme event would not 
solve our problem. A spiritual crisis at the en- 



Rewards amd Punishments 67 

trance to the other world, a crisis of illumination 
and of grace, may accomplish infinitely more than 
years of slow development. Salvation, in any true 
view of it, is a divine act ; and these souls that 
were under so heavy a handicap, will not be for- 
gotten or neglected by the Father of mercy. 

The question whether the punishments of the 
Intermediate State are confirmed and made end- 
less at the final judgment, or whether there is a 
possibility that the hopelessly impenitent will be 
annihilated, is one which would lead us into a 
field in which controversy has long raged, but 
which is somewhat beyond the limits of our theme. 
It need not be disputed that the word usually 
translated eternal primarily means age-long, rather 
than endless, the duration of the age in question 
depending on the context; that it is often quali- 
tative and not temporal ; and so does not of itself 
imply unlimited continuity. It may further be con- 
ceded that some of the figures by which the pun- 
ishment of the wicked is described, such as the 
destruction of chaff by fire, are quite suitable to 
the thought of annihilation ; and that even the con- 
ception of endless penalty might be realized in the 
cessation of the being of those condemned, since 
the loss of consciousness and of life would be 



68 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

penal and this loss would continue forever. But 
when we remember that this same word is quite 
commonly used of duration, without beginning, or 
without end, or both ; that it is applied to God 
himself; and that it is regularly employed to de- 
scribe the life of the redeemed as well as the 
destruction of the wicked ; when we remember too 
that there are reasons to think that the soul is 
naturally immortal though the Scriptures hardly 
approach the matter from that point of view ; and, 
above all, that rather the strongest language re- 
garding the condemnation of the reprobate was 
spoken by the merciful Jesus himself, it must be 
confessed that, though there is no room for too 
confident assertions, there is little basis for the 
hope that evil will finally disappear, even by the 
annihilation of the ungodly. 



VIII 
THE VASTNESS OF REDEMPTION 



69 



There's a wideness in God's mercy, 

Like the wideness of the sea; 
There's a kindness in His justice, 

Which is more than liberty. 

For the love of God is broader 

Than the measures of man's mind; 

And the heart of the Eternal 
Is most wonderfully kind. 

Faber. 



70 



VIII 

THE VASTNESS OF REDEMPTION 

Probably the chief reason why the supposition 
that the Intermediate State is a condition of sep- 
aration of the evil from the good, with rewards 
and punishments suited to each class, is regarded 
as a hard saying, is that so large a part of the 
race pass out of life without a knowledge of the 
historic Christ, and without opportunity to accept 
His salvation. Little children, the feeble-minded, 
the vast multitudes who have not been reached by 
the messengers of the cross, and those in Chris- 
tian lands to whom the gospel has not been intel- 
ligibly presented — they are carried away, often 
suddenly, by death and must await what is ap- 
pointed them. We may of course be sure that 
the fate allotted to each will be according to that 
which he had, and not according to that which he 
had not; that the servant who knew not his lord's 
will and did commit things worthy of stripes will 
be beaten with few stripes; but it is usually as- 
sumed that the separation of men at their entrance 
into the world of spirits would mean the banish- 

■ 71 



72 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

ment of a large proportion of the race, without a 
chance to believe, into the outer darkness. Is such 
a sweeping conclusion justified? Is it necessary to 
suppose that in these cases the sentence will pre- 
vailingly be to condemnation? 

It may be affirmed with confidence that all who 
are finally saved, will be saved through the re- 
deeming work of Christ. Whatever may have 
been the exact need which was met by the 
atonement and the exact meaning of the death on 
Calvary, it is certain that the mercy of God is 
mediated to men through that atonement. If we 
take a further step and assert, as do some, that 
only those who have consciously had that atone- 
ment laid before them and have accepted it by 
faith, will have a place among the blessed, we 
must admit that through all the ages the number 
of the redeemed has been comparatively small. 
But perhaps divine grace has a wider range than 
our vision can take in. Perhaps it is like the light 
of the sun which, diffused everywhere by the at- 
mosphere, brings brightness and cheer and health 
to many a place into which his direct rays do not 
penetrate. 

There are in the Bible many general indications 
that in this wider sense " there is plentiful re- 



The Fastness of Redemption 73 

demption in the blood that hath been shed." The 
Book of Jonah, written doubtless at a time when 
the narrow exclusiveness of Israel was becoming 
painfully manifest, teaches that in the nation which 
had been the most cruel and heartless invader of 
Palestine the children and even the cattle were 
the objects of God's pity. Malachi rebukes the 
profanation of worship prevalent among his fel- 
low countrymen by comparing it with the sincere 
service which was accorded to Jehovah in other 
lands ; connection and Hebrew usage require the 
translation, " For from the rising of the sun even 
unto the going down of the same my name is 
great among the Gentiles ; and in every place in- 
cense is offered unto my name, and a pure offer- 
ing; for my name is great among the Gentiles, 
saith Jehovah of hosts" (Mai. i. 11, marg.). 1 
Paul at Athens declares that God " made of one 
every nation of men to dwell on all the face of 
the earth" (Acts xvii. 26a), and he writes to the 
Colossians that " it was the good pleasure of the 
Father that in him should all the fullness dwell, 
and through him to reconcile all things unto him- 
self, having made peace through the blood of his 

cross" (Col. i. 19-20a) — language in whose in- 
1 So Wellhausen, Nowack, Marti, G. A. Smith, Driver. 



74 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

terpretation we must indeed be guided by other 
statements which suggest limitations upon it, but 
which surely implies that the results of the sacri- 
fice of the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin 
of the world shall be vast and triumphant; that 
the mercy of God is as infinite as His being. We 
must expect that it will be precisely in compassion 
that He will pass the bounds with which our think- 
ing would surround Him. 

" So shall crown Thee the topmost, ineffablest, utter- 
most crown — 

And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up 
nor down 

One spot for the creature to stand in! " 1 

But the question must be faced, How can the 
saving power of Christ be applied to those who 
have not been reached by His messengers ? " How 
then shall they call on him in whom they have not 
believed? and how shall they believe in him whom 
they have not heard? and how shall they hear 
without a preacher?" (Rom. x. 14). This is 
always the normal order; this is the one way 
known to us by which salvation can be brought to 
men. Beyond it we have no promises upon which 
to go. Every generation of Christians, having the 
1 Browning, " Saul." 



The Vastness of Redemption 75 

light, is responsible for carrying it to those, living 
in the world with them, who sit in darkness. 

But salvation, as the apostle viewed it, is a pres- 
ent thing x and his language doubtless has refer- 
ence to character in this world rather than to 
prospects for the world to come. The supreme 
reason for missionary effort in the twentieth cen- 
tury, as in the first, is that the heathen are lost 
now, sunken in sin, and that their religions are 
powerless to save them. And the condemnation 
of those who are finally condemned will be because 
of the fact that they sinned, even against such 
light and opportunities as were granted to them ; 
not because of any hypothetical rejection of a gos- 
pel which was never offered to them. The world 
needs to have Christ preached to it because un- 
counted multitudes have gone astray at present, 
whatever may be the fate that awaits them at 
death. 

But must we therefore conclude that the millions 

who during the ages have lived and died without 

a knowledge of the historic Jesus are, one and all, 

shut out forever from the mercy of God? As to 

infants and imbeciles let it be said that we have 

1 See an article by Dr. R. E. Speer, The Sunday- 
School Times, October 1, 1910. 



76 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

no right to think that men are ever punished ex- 
cept for real sins ; that sin is possible only to a 
free and responsible moral agent ; and that evil 
tendencies entailed by heredity, which had not, 
when death came, resulted in conscious transgres- 
sions, cannot be supposed to bring condemnation. 
For the rest, we know of men who were ac- 
cepted of God without a knowledge of the Christ 
of history ; namely, those of Old Testament times. 1 
Abraham, whom Paul sets forth as an example 
of faith, cannot actually have seen in prophetic 
vision the details of the life and death of Jesus ; 
but, with eyes open to the light which shone in 
his own day, he believed God and it was counted 
unto him for righteousness. Moses and Elijah, 
who met the Lord on the Mount of Transfigura- 
tion and talked of His decease which He should 
accomplish at Jerusalem, had during their earthly 
lives been dependent upon very dim foreshadow- 
ings of God's purpose of grace. The greatest of 
the prophets had not received the promises, but 
only seen them and greeted them from afar. But 
without the New Testament message these men 
were sincere worshipers ; they trusted Jehovah 
though they knew little of his large plans for 
1 So Dr. R. E. Speer, IMd. 



The Vastness of Redemption 77 

them; and so they were saved by the mercy of 
God through the atonement of the Lamb slain 
from the foundation of the world. The idea main- 
tained by some and sanctioned by certain ecclesi- 
astical authorities, that these pious souls were 
confined in some limbus of Sheol until the Master, 
while His body lay in the sepulcher, descended to 
the realm of the dead and brought them forth in 
triumph, is, to say the least, not Biblical, nor is it 
credible in itself. 

Now those who have not been reached by the 
gospel are in reality living B.C. 1 with the additional 
disadvantage that they have not the law and the 
prophets. To them Christ has not yet come, and 
through no fault of their own but solely because 
the messengers of the cross have not reached them. 
And who shall say there may not be among them 
men who have faith like that of Abraham? Who 
shall say that their blind feeling after God, by 
which the Saviour would doubtless be welcomed 
if they knew Him, may not be accepted as trust 
in the essential Christ and reckoned unto them for 
righteousness? Who shall say that among the 
surprises of heaven may not be the presence there 

of . many of the great souls counted as heathen, 
1 Dr. Speer, IMd. 



78 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

whose thoughts have been an inspiration even to 
the saints? 

For it will hardly be contended that faith must 
always comprehend the full extent of the bless- 
ings which it receives ; indeed, it is questionable 
if it can ever do so. At best it but catches a 
glimpse of the good things to come; but it trusts 
the Father, and He gives exceeding abundantly 
above all that we ask or think. Its object is not 
primarily a truth or a promise but a person; and, 
as it opens the door to God, it gains along with 
Him infinitely more than it knew. " The patri- 
archs, though they had no knowledge of a per- 
sonal Christ, were saved by believing in God so 
far as God had revealed himself to them ; and 
whoever among the heathen are saved, must in 
like manner be saved by casting themselves as 
helpless sinners upon God's plan of mercy, dimly 
shadowed forth in nature and providence. But 
such faith, even among the patriarchs and heathen, 
is implicitly a faith in Christ, and would become 
explicit and conscious trust and submission, when- 
ever Christ were made known to them." 1 " We 
have, therefore, the hope that even among the 
heathen there may be some, like Socrates, who, 
1 Strong, Systematic Theology, p. 467. 



The Fastness of Redemption 79 

under the guidance of the Holy Spirit working 
through the truth of nature and conscience, have 
found the way of life and salvation." x Surely it 
is safe to affirm that true seekers after God, like 
Cornelius, will always be found of Him. That 
such cases seem to be all too few is a reason for 
urgency in carrying the gospel to the world. 

There is perhaps an intimation of this wider 
reach of redeeming love in this oracle of Jesus: 
"And I say unto you, that many shall come from 
the east and the west, and shall sit down with 
Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom 
of heaven: but the sons of the kingdom shall be 
cast forth into the outer darkness" (Matt. viii. 
ll-12a; cf. Luke xiii. 29). About the great judg- 
ment scene depicted in Matthew xxv. 31-46 there 
has been much difference of opinion, but it is held 
by good authorities 2 that those who are here de- 
scribed as gathered before the august presence of 
the Son of man, are the heathen, the word trans- 
lated nations having commonly this sense. The 
principle upon which the separation is made fa- 
vors this view ; for the reward is given to those 

1 Strong, Systematic Theology, p. 468. 

2 E.g. Bruce, The Expositor's Greek Testament, in 
loco.; also David Smith, The Days of His Flesh, pp. 
429 ff. 



80 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

who by deeds of love had shown that they were 
really disciples of the Master though they seem 
not to have known Him, or at least not to have 
known the significance of their works of charity ; 
and punishment is meted out to those who lacked 
this evidence of fealty to Him. Such passages 
are an encouragement to cherish the larger hope. 
Surely it is permitted to us to believe that when 
grace has done its full work the numbers of the 
redeemed will be vast beyond our thought, and 
though we cannot affirm without limitation that 
" good will be the final goal of ill," we may ex- 
pect that at last those who are banished to outer 
darkness will be exceedingly few in comparison 
with the blessed, even as the inmates of our peni- 
tentiaries are overwhelmingly outnumbered by 
those that are free. 



IX 
PURGATORY 



81 



Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul, 
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee, 

And, o'er the penal waters, as they roll, 

I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee. 

And carefully I dip thee in the lake, 
And thou, without a sob or a resistance, 

Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take, 
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance. 

Angels, to whom the willing task is given, 

Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest; 

And Masses on the earth, and prayers in heaven, 
Shall aid thee at the Throne of the Most Highest. 
Newman, The Bream of Gerontius. 



82 



IX 

PURGATORY 

An entirely different conception of the Interme- 
diate State is maintained by those who accept the 
Roman Catholic dogma of Purgatory. Some who 
do not directly defend it, are inclined to admit that 
it solves many of the problems connected with the 
condition of the departed. At any rate, a teaching 
to which a large proportion of nominal Christians 
have pinned their faith, which has been enshrined 
in literature and has been immortalized by one of 
the greatest of poets in the " Divine Comedy," is 
one over which it is necessary to linger for a 
while. 

Purgatory, in accordance with the Catholic 
teaching*, " is a place or condition of temporal pun- 
ishment for those who, departing this life in God'a 
grace, are not entirely free from venial faults, or 
have not fully paid the satisfaction due to their 
transgressions." * A fundamental assertion is that 
" temporal punishment is due to sin, even after the 

1 Catholic Encyclopedia, sub voce " Purgatory," vol. 
xii. p. 575. 

83 



84 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

sin itself has been pardoned by God," * and the 
sufferings of Purgatory are of this sort. The 
soul, it is held, is sinless when it enters the ordeal 
and welcomes the fiercest pains which bring it 
nearer to the beatific vision. The tortures, though 
limited in duration, are intense beyond measure, 
the cleansing fires — whether figurative or literal 
— having been anciently described as more severe 
than anything a man can suffer in this life. Of 
especial practical importance is the affirmation 
that those on earth are still in communion with the 
souls in the purifying flames and can bring them 
assistance by their prayers and works of satisfac- 
tion. The sacrifice of the Mass is of peculiar ef- 
ficacy, particularly while the sacred victim lies on 
the altar. Moreover, a vast store of the merits of 
Christ and of the saints is at the disposal of the 
Church, and can be applied by the Pope who is the 
dispenser of this atonement for sin; hence indul- 
gences granted under his authority can shorten the 
period of penal torments. Such seems to be the 
general outline of this dogma, which, though it 
has brought comfort to many sincere hearts, has 
also not infrequently produced the most cruel and 

hateful consequences. 

1 Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. xii. p. 575. 



Purgatory 85 

It is almost superfluous, in a Biblical study of 
the Intermediate State, to examine the alleged 
proofs of this theory. It is not accepted on 
the ground of Scriptural teaching, but upon the 
authority of the Church. For the most part the 
whole defense of the hypothesis is based on the 
legitimacy of prayers for the dead; such prayers 
implying, as it is argued, that the departed, since 
they need our intercession, must be suffering, or 
are not yet enjoying complete blessedness. The 
right to make supplications for souls in the other 
world, the foundation upon which this vast super- 
structure is built, is vindicated by reference to 
several passages. 1 

The first of these is in the apocryphal Sec- 
ond Book of Maccabees (2 Mace. xii. 40-45). 
After one of the battles of Judas, idolatrous tok- 
ens were found under the garments of certain of 
the Jews that had fallen ; whereupon all " be- 
took themselves unto supplications, beseeching that 
the sin committed might be wholly blotted out. 
And the noble Judas exhorted the multitude to 
keep themselves from sin, forasmuch as they had 

seen before their eyes what things had come to 
1 Cf. Cardinal Gibbons, The Faith of our Fathers, 
pp. 205 ff. 



86 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

pass because of the sin of them that had fallen. 
And when he had made a collection, man by man, 
to the sum of two thousand drachmas of silver, 
he sent unto Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice for sin, 
doing therein right well and honorably, in that 
he took thought for a resurrection. For if he were 
not expecting that they that had fallen would rise 
again, it were superfluous and idle to pray for the 
dead. (And if he did it, looking unto an honor- 
able memorial of gratitude laid up for them that 
die in godliness, holy and godly was the thought.) 
Wherefore he made the propitiation for them that 
had died, that they might be released from their 
sin." 

Of this passage it is to be said, that it occurs in 
a late book which has been denied a place in the 
canon; that a distinction should be made between 
the facts and the interpretation placed upon them 
by the author, an Egyptian Jew whose views may 
have been colored by beliefs held in that land; 
that according to the law a sin offering could not 
have been accepted on behalf of idolaters, living 
or dead, so that there is reason to suspect that the 
sacrifice was intended to cleanse the army from 
contamination by the guilt of the slain ; that the 
hero at best was not overscrupulous in obedience 



Purgatory 87 

to the regulations of his religion ; and that if the 
historical value of this record were unimpeach- 
able, the incident must be considered exceptional, 
since this is the one reference to such usage in 
this period. 1 

The next Scripture adduced is this : "And who- 
soever shall speak a word against the Son of man, 
it shall be forgiven him ; but whosoever shall 
speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be for- 
given him, neither in this world nor in that which 
is to come" (Matt. xii. 32). From these words 
the inference is drawn that there are some sins 
which are forgiven in the world to come. But 
that we have here simply a very strong statement 
of the impossibility of pardon to such incorrigible 
transgressors, seems to be indicated by the par- 
allel passage in Mark, which may probably give 
the Lord's words more exactly, " Whosoever shall 
blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never for- 
giveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin" (Mark 
iii. 29; cf. Luke xii. 10). Furthermore, the word 
here translated world really means age, and there 
is no reason why the ordinary meaning should 
not be retained. The statement is that this for- 

1 C. H. H. Wright, The Intermediate State and Pray- 
ers for the Dead, pp. 37 ff., and an article by J. W. Hun- 
kin, M.A., The Expositor, April, 1915. 



88 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

giveness shall be granted " neither in this age nor 
in that which is to come." Now the dividing line 
between the two ages, in New Testament usage, 
was the Second Advent, and the Intermediate 
State belongs in the first. There can then be no 
reference here to expiation of guilt in Purgatory. 

Quite as unconvincing is the argument drawn 
from 1 Cor. iii. 13-15 : " Each man's work shall 
be made manifest : for the day shall declare it, be- 
cause it is revealed in fire; and the fire itself shall 
prove each man's work of what sort it is. If any 
man's work shall abide which he built thereon, he 
shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall 
be burned, he shall suffer loss : but he himself 
shall be saved; yet so as through fire." This is 
held to be a description of the testing in the flames 
of Purgatory. But such an interpretation is out 
of the question. This trying of men's works is 
to take place at The Day; and The Day can mean 
nothing else than the time of the coming of the 
Lord, with its accompanying judgments. It is im- 
possible to locate the events of this passage in the 
Intermediate State before the Master's appearance. 

Finally, there is another statement by Paul of 

which much is made. 1 " The Lord grant mercy 
x Cf., e.g., Luckock, After Death, pp. 77 ff. 



Purgatory 89 

unto the house of Onesiphorus : for he oft re- 
freshed me, and was not ashamed of my chain ; 
but when he was in Rome, he sought me dili- 
gently, and found me (the Lord grant unto him 
to find mercy of the Lord in that day) ; and in 
how many things he ministered at Ephesus, thou 
knowest very well" (2 Tim. i. 16-18). From the 
language here used and from the fact that a salu- 
tation to the " house of Onesiphorus " comes at 
the end of the Epistle, it has been concluded that 
the man himself was dead. This is quite possible, 
and cannot be disproved ; but for aught we know 
he may have been merely away from home. At 
best a mere possibility is an insecure base for the 
vast structure that is built upon it. If such a pas- 
sage inclines one to concede that some of the Re- 
formed Confessions went too far in absolutely 
forbidding prayers for the departed, a mere ejac- 
ulation like this — accepting the interpretation 
which is placed upon it — is not enough to show 
that such supplications were regularly offered. 

Suppose it should be granted, however, that the 
evidence in favor of the practice of praying for 
the dead is beyond cavil, to support on this foun- 
dation the whole Roman Catholic teaching regard- 
ing Purgatory requires an enormous stretch of 



90 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

inference. Exclamations like that of Paul con- 
cerning Onesiphorus, assuming that the latter was 
in the world of spirits, sound rather like expres- 
sions of confidence that all was well, than the 
opposite, and would, I suppose, be condemned by 
few. If the life of the departed is a condition of 
progress — and surely it must be so — petitions 
on their behalf would not imply any doubt as to 
their safety, but might, like prayers for the glory 
of God, be all the more earnest because of the cer- 
tainty that they were not in vain. " Since Rome," 
says Pusey, " has blended the cruel invention of 
Purgatory with the primitive custom of praying 
for the dead, it is not in communion with her that 
any can seek comfort from this rite." 1 

It remains to be said that the theory of Purga- 
tory not only lacks proof, but also will in no wise 
square with New Testament teachings, especially 
with fundamental teachings concerning the grace 
of God. It is natural to feel the need of prepara- 
tion for the beatific vision; it is natural to suppose 
that these earthen vessels could not hold the fullness 
of His glory, that these eyes would be blasted 
with excess of brightness in His presence. There 

1 Quoted by Hodge, Systematic Theology, vol. iil. 
pp. 752-753. 



Purgatory 91 

must manifestly be a supreme crisis of illumina- 
tion and cleansing before we can enter into that 
bliss. And so Newman represents the soul as fly- 
ing to the feet of Immanuel, 

" But e'er it reach them the keen sanctity, 
Which with its effluence, like a glory, clothes 
And circles round the Crucified, has seized, 
And scorched, and shrivelled it; and now it lies 
Passive and still before the awful throne." 1 

The best saint needs to be made ready for full 
fellowship with God, whether it be by a sudden 
transformation or by a process of growth. But 
if, as the dogma asserts, the spirit is already sin- 
less when it enters the cleansing fires, if it wel- 
comes the very tortures in its ardor of love, the 
transformation has already taken place, and a long 
process of purification is not necessary. When 
Purgatory is reached there are no faults left, to 
be burnt and purged away. 

But while language like the above is held, the 
truth is that the sufferings of the Intermediate 
State are, according to the Roman Catholic author- 
ities, really penal. Temporal punishment is due 

to sin even after the sin itself has been pardoned. 2 

1 Newman, " The Dream of Gerontius." 

2 Catholic Encyclopedia, sub voce. 



92 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

It is as if God kept books, and the debit and credit 
sides of each man's account were duly engrossed ; 
part of the guilt is provided for in the atonement 
of Christ, but the sinner must make satisfaction 
for the rest. Of course no one denies that the 
consequences of sin are felt even by those who 
are pardoned, because the invariable laws of na- 
ture bring pain to him who breaks them, and these 
laws cannot be changed in the case, of each one 
who is forgiven. When the constitution is ruined 
by excess, even the repentant acceptance of the 
sacrifice of Calvary does not grant immunity from 
the dire results. Much is made by some writers 
of the instances cited in the Bible in which men, 
manifestly now children of God, are still made to 
feel the smart of the wrongs committed in former 
years. 

Nevertheless, we must insist upon that funda- 
mental teaching of the New Testament, that all 
the sins of those who have accepted the redeem- 
ing love of God are blotted out. " There is there- 
fore now no condemnation to them that- are in 
Christ Jesus" (Rom. viii. 1). Chastisement is 
not punishment. The marks and scars which past 
transgressions have left and which cannot be 
erased, are not penalties; they are transformed 



Purgatory 93 

and transfigured into means of grace, driving 
the soul back upon its source of strength in the 
risen Lord. If our guilt must in a measure be 
expiated by ourselves, eternal life is not wholly 
the free gift of God, and the boasting, of which 
Paul so often spoke, is not excluded. The whole 
scheme of salvation with which the dogma of Pur- 
gatory is bound up, involving as it does deliver- 
ance from wrath partly by grace and partly of 
works, is a virtual assertion of the insufficiency of 
the divine atonement. 

Concerning the doctrinal implications of this 
teaching, with its affirmation of the value of in- 
dulgences, its assumption of the possibility of 
works of supererogation, its blasphemous con- 
tention that the Roman Pontiff is the dispenser of 
the satisfaction won by Christ and the saints, and 
with its consequent reposing of magical power 
over the realm of the dead in the hands of the 
priesthood irrespective of character, much has 
been written during the centuries since the abuses 
of Tetzel drove Martin Luther to nail his theses 
to the door of the church at Wittenberg; and lit- 
tle more need be said here. Its practical conse- 
quences have often been deplorable enough. The 
right to deal out grace to the living and especially 



94 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

succor to the departed being- the prerogative of a 
special class of men, kept apart from their fel- 
lows, forbidden to enter into the most sacred of 
social relations, and handing down their power 
from generation to generation by tactual succes- 
sion, the people are absolutely in the hands of the 
hierarchy. That many noble and self-sacrificing 
men have made use of this extraordinary leverage 
upon human action, with the highest disinterest- 
edness and also with the utmost tenderness and 
devotion, is thankfully acknowledged. Unfortu- 
nately all the priesthood are not of this sort; and 
this theory, bringing burdened souls in their time 
of sorrow under the complete control of fallible 
men, has been productive of superstition and ex- 
tortion and ecclesiastical tyranny and a thousand 
baleful influences, injurious alike to clergy and 
laity. A dogma whose actual results have been 
so evil, is hard to accept as having come from God. 



X 

THE SPIRITS IN PRISON 



95 



But now Thou art in the Shadowless Land, 

Behind the light of the setting Sun; 
And the worst is forgotten which Evil planned, 

And the best which Love's glory could win is won. 

Sir Edwin Arnold. 



96 



X 

THE SPIRITS IN PRISON 

As certain views concerning the Intermediate 
State which have gained wide acceptance, are 
based chiefly upon two singular passages in the 
First Epistle of Peter, it will be necessary to ad- 
vert to these, though the discussion permitted by 
the plan of this work must be extremely inade- 
quate. They read thus : " Because Christ also 
suffered for sins once, the righteous for the un- 
righteous, that he might bring us to God ; being 
put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the 
spirit ; in which also he went and preached unto 
the spirits in prison, which aforetime were diso- 
bedient, when the long-suffering of God waited 
in the days of Noah, while the ark was a prepar- 
ing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved 
through water" (1 Peter iii. 18-20); "For unto 
this end was the gospel preached even to the dead, 
that they might be judged according to men in the 
flesh, but live according to God in the spirit " 
(1 Peter iv. 6). No doubt the two statements 
may be held to refer to different events, but there 

97 



98 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

is a very general tendency to make the explana- 
tion which is thought sufficient for the first, apply 
also to the second. 

On the basis of these statements, numerous the- 
ories have been built, having as their common fea- 
ture a ministry of our Lord in the realm of the 
dead. There have been many differences as to 
details. Some believe that this preaching to the 
spirits in prison occurred after the resurrection; 
but most maintain that it was during the time 
when the Master's body lay in the tomb. An opin- 
ion held by Calvin and some others in the period 
of the Reformation, but now almost universally 
rejected, was that this was a proclamation to the 
lost, but that it was a proclamation of condemna- 
tion. It is more generally maintained that it was 
a message of pardon through the atonement of the 
cross, and that the disobedient of the days of Noah 
are mentioned only as the most conspicuous exam- 
ples of the class to whom the good tidings were 
heralded. Some assert that all who have not 
heard the gospel during this life will have a sec- 
ond chance; others argue that all Old Testament 
saints were kept waiting for blessedness, in some 
state of incompleteness though not of misery, un- 
til Christ entered the portals of death and set them 



The Spirits in Prison 99 

free, leading- them in triumph with Him at His 
resurrection — a view which accords with the 
Roman Catholic doctrine of the limb us palrum. 

The other interpretation which is usually offered 
and which has commanded the assent of many great 
scholars from Augustine to Salmond, finds the ex- 
planation of these words in the events connected 
with the Deluge. Christ's preaching was in the 
spirit, by the agency of Noah ; those to whom it 
was heralded were the antediluvians who later 
were destroyed in the flood ; the phrases, " the 
spirits in prison" and (if the two passages are 
to be treated alike) " the dead " describe their 
condition at present, — not at the time of the 
event described, when they were still in the body 
and free. It is insisted that the whole statement 
carries one back to that period, and that it is 
natural to suppose that this proclamation of the 
gospel took place then, and quite as natural to 
designate those who heard it by the conditions in 
which they are now placed. 

We cannot take up in detail the arguments in 
favor of these two opposing theories. 1 In truth, 
neither - of them is very satisfactory. According 

1 They are well summarized in Stevens's Theology of 
the New Testament, pp. 304 ff. 



100 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

to the first, these verses present a most extraordi- 
nary revelation, unsupported elsewhere in Scrip- 
ture; and present it in an entirely incidental way, 
with no very obvious bearing upon the line of 
thought which is being pursued. It does not help 
us much to be told that a single clear statement of 
a truth is enough ; that this presentation of so 
astonishing a fact, if it be such, is extremely 
obscure — therein lies the chief difficulty. But 
turning to the other hypothesis, it is open to 
the objection that it rather forces the meaning of 
the language, giving it a turn which, though not 
impossible, is not quite natural; and that the ordi- 
nary intelligent reader, unbiased by dogmatic con- 
siderations, is not likely so to understand the 
words. 

But another solution of the problem, and one 
that has much in its favor, has been proposed, 
namely, that we have here a reference to certain 
incidents related in well-known apocryphal litera- 
ture of the time. In the Book of Enoch the pa- 
triarch is said to have been sent, apparently after 
his translation, on a mission to the disobedient 
angels who had corrupted the earth (chap, xii.) ; 
while in other works, The Book of the Secrets of 
Enoch, and The Jubilees, it is declared that these 



The Spirits in Prison 101 

selfsame spirits are shut up in prison (2 Enoch vii.). 
Such an occurrence would seem to be described in 
the words under consideration. Professor Salmond 
wrote, " It would be in some sense a relief if it 
could be shown to be a passage of the same order 
as those referring to the Book of Enoch and the 
Assumption of Moses in the Epistle of Jude." 1 
This distinguished scholar rejects the view, but it 
was evidently quite attractive to him. 

Now, an ingenious conjecture has been made by 
Dr. J. Rendel Harris. He supposes that the orig- 
inal text (ver. 19) was, " In which also Enoch 
went and preached unto the spirits in prison," and 
that the name has fallen out through " a scribe's 
blunder in dropping some repeated letters " (eV <p teal 
Ej>w%). 2 If this name could be restored, all would 
be clear. The question as to why this preaching 
was located in the period of the Deluge is no 
longer puzzling-. As the mission of Enoch was 
after his translation, and so in the spiritual state, 
a suitable meaning is given to the phrase " in 
which also." And if the logical connection with 
the preceding line of thought is not close, this is 
not a singular phenomenon in the writings of 

1 Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 379. 

2 Side-Lights on New Testament Research, p. 208. 



102 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Peter, whose purpose was practical and whose 
warm exhortations abound in sudden transitions. 

Such an emendation, without support from the 
manuscripts, is perhaps not likely to command very 
general assent, but it is at least highly probable. 
The quotation in the Epistle of Jude, and a fur- 
ther possible reminiscence of its language in this 
Epistle of Peter * show that the Book of Enoch 
was known and valued among the early Christians ; 
and a reference to it would no doubt be easily un- 
derstood. The conjecture is adopted by Dr. Mof- 
fatt in his Translation of the New Testament, and 
he renders the passage freely thus : " It was in the 
Spirit that Enoch also went and preached to the 
imprisoned spirits who had disobeyed at the time 
when God's patience held out during the construc- 
tion of the ark in the days of Noah." 

If this interpretation be accepted, the first at 
least of these famous passages may be dismissed 
from consideration in a study of the Intermediate 
State. It would have " nothing more than the 
illustrative value of a quotation.'' 2 The writer 
has only made literary use of an incident related 

in a book well known to himself and his readers, 
x In 1 Peter i. 12; cf. J. Rendel Harris, Side-Lights 

on N. T. Research, p. 207. 
2 Salmond, Christian Doctrine of Immortality, p. 379. 



The Spirits in Prison 103 

and no more affirms the truth of the incident than 
would a modern author who should refer to Chris- 
tian's sojourn in the Interpreter's House or to his 
battle with Apollyon. 

There remains the other passage, of somewhat 
similar import (1 Peter iv. 6), which is also quite 
obscure. There is one serious objection to under- 
standing it as a revelation of a preaching to the 
dead during the Intermediate State, which at first 
glance it seems to be; this preaching as here de- 
scribed had two purposes, one, a judgment of the 
dead, the other, their life; now the judgment took 
place " in the flesh," and consequently before they 
passed into the other world; if then the preaching- 
occurred in the spirit world, it was subsequent in 
time to one of the objects which it was intended 
to serve. To express this sense we should need to 
read, " For unto this end was the gospel preached 
even to the dead, that, although (or after) they 
had been judged according to men in the flesh, 
they should live according to God in the spirit," 
— which seems to be a forced construction. The 
tense of the verb, too, would indicate that the pre- 
sentation of the message was a definite occurrence 
in the past, not a heralding of the evangel to the 



104 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

dead, which, to reach them all, must continue 
through the centuries. 

Passing by other interpretations, there is an al- 
ternative view which commends itself and is ac- 
cepted by some very competent critics. It holds 
that those to whom the preaching came were Chris- 
tians, now dead, perhaps martyrs to their faith, 
but destined to everlasting life. It is well known 
that there was much concern among the early be- 
lievers lest those who had fallen asleep before the 
coming of the Lord should lose some of the bless- 
ings bestowed in connection with that august event. 
Paul deals directly with these anxieties in his 
First Epistle to the Thessalonians. In the passage 
before us, Peter has been exhorting the disciples 
to be faithful even to the point of suffering, to 
reject the life of lust and pleasure, especially in 
view of the fact that they are to give account to 
the Judge of the living and the dead. Christ is 
thus to be their vindicator. But the mention of 
the " dead " reminds the apostle of the believers 
who were fallen asleep ; and so on this theory his 
thought is, They too will be vindicated ; the gos- 
pel was presented to them while on earth with the 
purpose that, coming indeed on the fleshly side 
under the judgment common to the race, the judg- 



The Spirits in Prison 105 

ment of death, they should nevertheless on the 
spiritual side live a life like that of God. 1 

This view makes the preaching a definite his- 
torical event, just as the tense of the verb requires. 
It deals more fairly with the two clauses showing 
the purpose of the preaching; both things are 
thought of as in some sense consequences of the 
presentation of the message, following it in time, 
though the second was the ultimate goal, the first 
being rather a barrier to be overleaped in reach- 
ing it. The two phrases stand, however, in a rela- 
tion in which one is qualified by the other ; the 
proclamation of the evangel had brought it about 
that they should indeed be still under the judgment 
of death in the flesh, like other men; but along 
with that should, on the spiritual side, have eternal 
life with God. 

Our conclusion then is that neither of these fa- 
mous passages teaches that there is a presentation 
of the gospel during the Intermediate State, and 
that the theory of our Lord's mission to the dead 
while His body lay in the tomb, is without foun- 
dation. 

1 So substantially Salmond, Christian Doctrine of 
Immortality, pp. 379 ff. 



XI 
CELESTIAL ACTIVITY 



107 



And only the Master shall praise us, and only the 

Master shall blame; 
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall 

work for fame, 
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his 

separate star, 
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of 

Things as They are. 

Kipling. 



108 



XI 



CELESTIAL ACTIVITY 

Probably one of the chief reasons for the in- 
stinctive shrinking from death, even of those who 
have strong faith in the risen Christ, is that it 
seems to end the activities of life. Work of the 
greatest importance remains unfinished. Plans 
that have been cherished for years are left behind, 
never to be carried out. Macaulay's History must 
always be merely a splendid fragment. No ge- 
nius will ever be found who shall be competent 
to complete the Tenth Symphony of Beethoven. 
But if, even in the Intermediate State, the soul is 
still conscious and alert, if it has something to do 
and can accomplish its tasks with joy, this loss is 
surely gain. 

Scriptural evidence on this point is, to be sure, 
very scanty ; but there are certainly hints that the 
life is to be one of activity. The appearance of 
Moses and Elijah at the transfiguration, and their 
interest in the plan of redemption, give an indi- 
cation that through all these ages they had been 
busy in the King's business. Paul's ambition, 

. 109 



110 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

whether at home (in the body) or absent, to be 
well pleasing to the Master (2 Cor. v. 9), and his 
statement that to depart and be with Christ is 
very far better (Phil. i. 23), interpreted in the 
light of his restless ardor in service, justify the 
inference that he expected still to be at work after 
death. Furthermore, something may be learned 
from the important place which is given to the 
coming of the Lord in apostolic exhortations ; that 
supreme event is made the goal; the eyes are kept 
fixed upon it; it is the limit of the process of sal- 
vation begun here ; and this tone of the New Tes- 
tament writers seems to imply that efforts for God 
in preparation for that supreme consummation will 
continue even when the earthly career is closed. 
" Being confident of this very thing, that he who 
began a good work in you will perfect it until the 
day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. i. 6). 

But even without such hints from Holy Writ, it 
would be difficult to resist the conclusion that the 
Intermediate State is a condition of activity. Let 
it be granted that the soul lives and is conscious, 
and it must follow that its energies will be exerted, 
for consciousness is spiritual activity. We cannot 
conceive of a spirit that is inactive. Our powers of 
thought are not always at the same level ; in sleep, 



Celestial Activity 111 

and especially in disease, the stream may run very 
low, but it probably never dries up, clogged though 
it may be by its dependence upon the earthly body. 
It seems, then, certain that an intelligent being, 
confirmed in holiness, relieved of the drag of sin 
and of the flesh, and living in fellowship with God, 
must have something to do as the condition of its 
existence. 

For our natures demand work. The primal 
curse that man should eat bread by the sweat of 
his brow, cannot be evaded, and was really a bless- 
ing in disguise. The unhappiest of all lives is the 
one which has no function and no tasks, and in 
which consequently the spirit, made for activity, 
turns and preys upon itself. The parasite, in na- 
ture and in society, suffers the penalty that it 
loses the power which it fails to use. The uni- 
verse in which we are placed teaches in the stern- 
est way the lesson that we live by doing. But to 
have a task with which one is capable of dealing 
and in which one can take pleasure, to know that 
one is accomplishing results with hand or brain, 
to master circumstances and bend them to one's 
purpose, — this is one of the highest pleasures 
given to man. The difference between the artist 
and the drudge, leaving gifts and skill out of ac- 



112 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

count, is that the former toils because of love for 
his work and joy in it, the latter because he must. 
So necessary, nay, so ennobling is labor, that one 
cannot but think that the Intermediate State would 
be a lower condition than the present life, unless it 
meant activity for the soul. 

But herein is one of the problems of life, be- 
cause work is not only obligatory and within cer- 
tain limits the source of pleasure, but it is also the 
cause of pain and suffering. Weariness constantly 
attends it, as its dark shadow. A strong man with 
a perfect physique can endure much physical ex- 
ertion, but there is a point at which he grows 
tired. The duties of the common day are hard 
and often uncongenial, and at evening both body 
and brain are fagged. Or even if the thing to be 
done is to one's taste, if it is the very thing for 
which one was born and which one ordinarily de- 
lights in, the time comes when one turns away 
from it, and desires rest. The orator sometimes 
loathes the thought of an audience; the artist 
wants to escape from the sight of pictures and 
sculpture; the musician refuses to touch the in- 
strument with which he can charm an audience. 
It matters not how gifted is the worker, or how 
noble the work, it matters not whether it is an 



Celestial Activity 113 

achievement of hand or brain or heart, under long- 
continued strain and stress it becomes mere toil 
and drudgery, for the greatest genius grows tired. 

There is assuredly nothing sinful in weariness. 
Those who say that he who is led by the Spirit 
will always be fresh and vigorous in holy endeavor 
seem to forget that the Master Himself grew tired 
and sometimes found it necessary to call the dis- 
ciples aside to rest a while. The soul that is giving 
out anything* of worth will feel the drain, even 
as Jesus knew that virtue had gone out of Him. It 
is not wrong to say, " I am weary in Thy service, 
O my God, but not weary of Thy service." 

And so there are many who, as they look beyond 
the grave, long and pray chiefly for rest; this is 
the aspect of the rewards of the future which to 
them makes the strongest appeal. The blessedness 
which, in the Apocalypse, is pronounced upon those 
who die in the Lord, is, " Yea, saith the Spirit, that 
they may rest from their labors ; for their works 
follow with them" (Rev. xiv. 13). Assuredly, 
therefore, in order to satisfy the longings of toil- 
ing, disappointed, tired men and women, the bliss 
of the redeemed must include not only activity, but 
also that Sabbath-keeping which remaineth for the 
people of God (Heb. iv. 9). 



114 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

But are the two things inconsistent? Doubtless 
they are so in this world where, though our happi- 
ness depends upon labor, we are constantly, on 
account of the weariness that accompanies it, seek- 
ing to escape from labor. But why do we grow 
tired? If work is a blessing, why can we not en- 
gage in it without cessation and with constant 
and growing pleasure? 

Is not this one of the limitations of our 
mortal condition here, where the whole crea- 
tion groaneth and travaileth in pain together 
until now? The soul must operate through a 
material body which is not strong enough and 
fine enough to bear the strain which is put 
upon it. Apparently only the conscious volun- 
tary action of our muscles and nerves, action 
at the behest of the will, produces fatigue. 1 The 
powerful muscles of the diaphragm, chest, and 
abdomen, which keep up the process of breathing 
by an enormous expenditure of energy, dare not 
rest, or disaster would follow to the whole body ; 
indeed we cannot, if we would, make them cease 
working for more than a very limited time. The 
heart continues to beat for threescore years and 

1 See W. Hanna Thomson, Brain and Personality, 
pp. 293 ff, 



Celestial Activity 115 

ten, or fourscore years, and sometimes in modern 
days, has, by immersion in chemical solutions, 
been revived after the death of the body, and has 
contracted and expanded as if it were sending 
blood through the system. " It is not natural 
work, whether nervous or muscular, but only con- 
scious work which wears." x The arms and lower 
limbs which move only at the command of the 
mind soon grow tired. The weariness which comes 
from long application to study or from hard think- 
ing is literally brain-fag. And it is because of the 
exhaustion of these parts which are under the 
direct control of the will, that sleep is an absolute 
necessity, the taskmaster withdrawing in a meas- 
ure from the body that its powers may be recuper- 
ated, though the involuntary muscles- work away 
as usual. 

And though all this is true of animals as well 
as men, it seems to indicate that fatigue comes 
only when the material is in the service of the 
spiritual, and that the demands of this imperial 
servitude are so exacting that the flesh cannot 
long endure them. The most pleasant labor soon 
exhausts our strength, only because " this muddy 

vesture of decay doth grossly close us in." 
1 Brain and Personality, p. 298. 



116 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Now we must believe that in the Intermediate 
State, even though it may be in some sense a pre- 
liminary condition, we shall be either pure spirits 
or spirits clothed with heavenly habiliments suited 
to the new life. In either case, surely the malad- 
justment between the body and the soul, by which 
the body, taxed beyond its strength by its ethereal 
master, suffers continual weariness, will cease ; 
the soul will surely have better means of self- 
expression, will exchange the Caliban that has 
grudgingly done its bidding here, for a refined 
and willing Ariel. Surely a spirit, freed from sin 
and delivered from the bonds of the fleshly and 
earthly, will be in a condition for higher flights ; 
and whatever be its environment, whether it dwell 
in the house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens, or be found naked, it will surely be able 
to do its work with liberty and joy, and will never 
have the experience of fatigue. If this is to be 
our experience, our pleasure in work and our 
longing for rest will be satisfied at the same time. 
We shall have rest in work, and shall feel the ex- 
hilaration of the toiler in the midst of his task and 
his contentment when he lays it aside. 

The curiosity of our hearts which crave to know 
more about the occupations of the spirits of just 



Celestial Activity 117 

men made perfect must be curbed. No details are 
revealed to us ; perhaps they could not be revealed 
to us here below. But we may at least be confi- 
dent that there will be the delight of working 
from the highest motives, for it will be a service 
of love ; that the tasks upon which we shall be 
engaged will be congenial, so that we shall have 
the pleasure of achieving without the pain, and 
that, since God and His universe are inexhausti- 
ble, ages may pass over us, but there will always 
be something to do and something to enjoy. For 
the rest we must wait till the veil is lifted. 



XII 
PROGRESS 



119 



Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory of song, 
Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on an endless 
sea — 
Glory of virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the 
wrong — 
Nay, but she aimed not at glory, no lover of glory 
she; 
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be. 

The wages of sin is death: if the wages of Virtue be 
dust, 
Would she have heart to endure for the life of the 
worm and the fly? 
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the 
just, 
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in a summer 
sky; 
Give her the wages of going on, and not to die. 

Tennyson. 



120 



XII 

PROGRESS 

According to his biographer, Lord Macaulay 
believed that he constantly became a better writer 
as he grew older. Dwight L. Moody used to say 
that he expected the next year to be better than 
the last if he lived, and better still if he died. 
Gladstone kept an open mind and continued to 
add to his encyclopedic knowledge to the end of 
his days. Progress is the law of life for great 
souls like these ; it is the law of life in their meas- 
ure for all. Will such progress continue in the 
Intermediate State? The Christian instinctively 
feels that it will do so. Indeed, such views as have 
been presented in the preceding pages are some- 
times rejected on the ground that, if character is 
fixed as the soul enters the other world, there is 
not time for a process of development, which, it 
is asserted, is absolutely essential, especially for 
those who repented on their deathbeds and for in- 
fants and imbeciles. 

On this point, as on that last dealt with, Scrip- 
ture evidence is indirect and inferential. It was 

121 



122 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Paul, the man that was ever forgetting the things 
which are behind, and stretching forward to the 
things which are before (Phil. iii. 13), who, in the 
same Epistle, wrote that to die was gain and that 
he had the desire to depart and be with Christ, 
for it was very far better (Phil. i. 21, 23). Would 
he have thought it better if he had known that it 
put an end to progress? The same teaching is 
implied still more directly in such passages as 
this, " Being confident of this very thing, that he 
who began a good work in you will perfect it un- 
til the day of Jesus Christ" (Phil. i. 6). These 
statements, since they place the goal of the Chris- 
tian race at the coming of the Lord, seem to mean 
that growth .and attainments in grace will continue 
until the realization of that blessed hope. 

How could it be otherwise? Must we not 
necessarily make progress, not only in the period 
between death and resurrection but even in the 
eternal state? If our souls survive in conscious 
life, then must " knowledge grow from more to 
more." But we have every reason surely to believe 
that they will not only survive, but will survive 
with heightened powers, far beyond their utmost 
range here. The capacity to learn and to think 
must be far greater when the mind is freed from 



Progress 123 

the pollution of sin, and from the handicap of a 
mortal body which is too weak and too coarse to 
stand the strain of its high service. The one con- 
dition of fellowship with God, namely, likeness to 
Him, will have been attained ; and that fellow- 
ship will continue and deepen without limit. The 
perverse will, transformed and transfigured, sunk 
in the will of God, can now act with the utmost 
freedom, and encounter no hindrances to its pur- 
pose, because it wishes what God wishes. And 
so there will be offered all the conditions for a 
vast expansion of being, a development of power 
and of character and of enjoyment above all that 
we can ask or think. 

Certainly all that we have gained in this life 
of knowledge and skill and taste, which is not in 
itself evil or merely earthly and material, will be 
retained. Perhaps the poet will still be a poet 
with higher powers of insight and of expression; 
the musician still a musician with greater mastery 
of the world of tone; the orator still an orator 
with a stronger reasoning faculty and a more elo- 
quent utterance; the scientist still a scientist with 
deeper intuition and greater patience as an inves- 
tigator, possibly with vision like that of the eye 
assisted by the microscope and the telescope, and 



124 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

with the vast universe of God as a field of opera- 
tion. All human achievement here is so fragmen- 
tary and incomplete. We know only in part ; our 
highest skill is limited by our weakness and weari- 
ness ; our aspirations and ideals are not realized ; 
our best thoughts and longings can be only im- 
perfectly grasped, and inadequately set forth even 
to ourselves. May we not confidently hope that 
the life beyond the grave is one of realization, fol- 
lowing this present time of anticipation? 

"All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of good shall 
exist; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, nor good, 
nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each survives for 
the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of an hour. 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for earth 
too hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose itself in 
the sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and the bard; 
Enough that he heard it once, we shall hear it by 
and by." 1 

But some insist that if the Intermediate State 
be a condition of progress, then it cannot be true 
that the character is fixed for good or evil at death, 
1 Browning, "Abt Vogler." 



Progress 125 

for such fixity means that probation is ended; and 
they urge that there are certain classes even of 
the saved for whom such probation is most neces- 
sary; infants who did not live to years of moral 
accountability; imbeciles whose mental and moral 
childhood never ended in this life; and those who 
after a long career of sin turned to God on their 
deathbeds and left this world without undergoing 
any test of their new faith. The objection would 
be fatal to the belief that for those who are under 
grace sinlessness comes with the separation of soul 
and body, if it were assumed that only human 
power and natural processes are to be reckoned 
with. But this wondrous change, whenever it oc- 
curs, is one that can be brought about only by the 
mighty power of God, working of course in ac- 
cordance with the laws of our own natures. It is 
not by a gradual process but by a divine trans- 
formation that the feet are to be placed upon the 
higher plane of perfect holiness. 

But does the attainment of sinlessness mean the 
end of progress? Perhaps if we could see things 
as we shall see them hereafter, we should realize 
that it is the true beginning of progress ; that, un- 
til that great milestone has been passed, our way 
is slippery and beset with hindrances, so that we 



126 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

stumble, and sometimes go backward, and at best 
make but little headway. But within the limits 
implied in sinlessness there is room for endless 
development, — from that untried childish inno- 
cence which is free from fault because it has not 
been tempted, on to that strong manly holiness 
which has encountered evil and overcome it, and 
so wears the crown of victory, and beyond this to 
higher and higher reaches of attainment. Sinless- 
ness will determine the direction in which the soul 
shall move, but will leave it as free as in this life, 
or rather immeasurably freer than it ever can be 
here. The darker side of this truth is that those who 
have chosen evil until their characters have become 
fixed in evil, will doubtless, beyond the grave, be- 
come worse and worse. But as for the good, who, 
as we must hope, will be the overwhelmingly larger 
number, it is assuredly not necessary to assume 
that, because many of them pass from this life 
utterly immature and in need of long development 
in holiness, they will remain, during the Interme- 
diate State, in a condition of unstable spiritual 
equilibrium. It is rather to be expected that for 
those who die in faith there will be higher power 
for growth and better opportunity for it, without 
the handicaps of the present; that, in short, they 



Progress 127 

will have done with sin, and because of that will 
have unlimited capacity for progress. 

For spotless holiness does not mean infinitude. 
There will always be a limit to our knowledge and 
our power and our love, even when we are freed 
from the trammels of the flesh. But because 
knowledge and power and love are limited they 
will be capable of increase. Perhaps the spirit 
can range through the vast universe of God; it 
will learn more and more of the love of Christ 
which passeth knowledge; life through long eons 
will afford endless variety; new vistas of discovery 
will open out, new experiences will come; and so 
we may confidently believe that there will be con- 
tinued progress without the satiety and world- 
weariness that on this sphere are so often the ac- 
companiment of great attainments. 



XIII 
SOCIAL RELATIONS 



129 



There is 
One great society alone on earth: 
The noble Living and the noble Dead. 

Wordsworth. 



130 



XIII 

SOCIAL RELATIONS 

A constant theme of conversation and dis- 
course with Jesus was the Kingdom of Heaven. 
It was spoken of sometimes as present and some- 
times as far in the future; as begun in this life, 
but carried to perfection in the life beyond. Its 
supreme triumph was expected at the second ad- 
vent, but it was already in the world and working 
among men. It was to be God's reign, a new spir- 
itual and social order in which the subjects would 
be bound by love and loyalty to the King and to 
one another. 

Surely it is in the region beyond the grave that 
this ideal will receive its first adequate fulfillment, 
though it ought ever to be the goal of Christian 
effort on earth. When at last the soul attains to 
sinlessness and possesses the perfect likeness of 
God, His kingdom has come, and His throne is set 
up. But will the social aspects of the kingdom be 
possible there? In that state which some theolog- 
ians think peculiarly suited to meditation and in- 
trospection, will fellowship with others be granted ? 

131 



132 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Shall we renew our friendships with those whom 
we have loved in this life? This is a question 
which many ask, and surely an answer lies near 
at hand; Heaven is the Kingdom of God, the new 
spiritual and social order in perfection. 

In an entirely disembodied state, if the spirits 
of just men made perfect are in such a state, the 
forms that here seem so essential a part of the 
personality, " the human face divine," will not 
serve as means of identification. Of what sort the 
life of a soul without bodily organs must be, is of 
course a mystery to us, because it transcends all 
present experience. But that " spirit with spirit 
can speak " is not merely the dream of a poet ; it 
is the faith that is the basis of all religion ; it has 
received even some scientific confirmation from 
experiments in psychical research. Even here our 
fellowship is a fellowship of spirits, and when, one 
views the dead form of the dearest friend, one feels 
that the part that has been loved is not there. 
There is no reason then in the nature of the case, 
though we have no experience to guide us, why 
we should suppose that such friendship must 
cease when the soul is separated from the body. 

The Scripture evidence, though for the most 
part indirect, seems decidedly to favor this hope 



Social Relations 133 

which all hearts cherish. Even those whose view 
of the future was governed by the old doctrine of 
Sheol apparently looked for a reunion of friends 
in the underworld, though in this dark abode it 
could give little cheer. Jacob counts on a meeting 
with his son Joseph whom he believed to have 
been torn by wild beasts (Gen. xxxvii. 35) ; David 
says of his departed child, " I shall go to him, but 
he shall not return to me" (2 Sam. xii. 23) ; the 
king of Babylon, in the grim picture drawn by the 
prophet, disturbs the repose of the shades as he 
enters their presence, and they mock him with the 
reproach that he has become like themselves (Isa. 
xiv. 9 fT.) ; and the common euphemism for death, 
to be " gathered to one's fathers," implies the same 
belief, for it is often used of those whose bodies 
were not buried in the tombs of their ancestors. 

In the passages of the New Testament which 
bear on the subject at all, this comforting thought 
would appear to be taken for granted. We might 
argue that the fellowship of the saints is guaran- 
teed in the fact of their being with the Lord in 
glory, for He is man as well as God, and friend- 
ship with Him must be human friendship in a true 
sense. In one of the Gospels the kingdom of 
heaven is set forth as a banquet to which many 



134 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

shall come from the east and the west, and shall 
sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Matt, 
viii. 11). It is rather natural to suppose that, since 
Moses and Elijah appeared together on the Mount 
of Transfiguration, there must long have been an 
intimacy between them (Mark ix. if. and paral- 
lels). The lesson drawn from the parable of the 
Unjust Steward is that we should so use earthly 
possessions as to make them the means of form- 
ing friendships which will assure us of a welcome 
when we pass into the other world (Luke xvi. 9). 
Lazarus was carried by the angels to Abraham's 
bosom; and, though this figurative language must 
not be treated as if it were literal, it seems to mean 
that the beggar entered into companionship with 
the father of the faithful (Luke xvi. 22). Paul's 
statement to the Thessalonians who mourned the 
loss of loved ones, that at the second advent, they, 
together with their friends risen from their graves, 
would be caught up to meet the Lord in the air 
(1 Thess. iv. 15 fT.) is doubtless not meant pri- 
marily to give any teaching on this subject, and 
in any case carries us beyond the Intermediate 
State ; but it may be placed with these other pas- 
sages as showing the relations of the redeemed to 
one another, for the comfort of this revelation 



Social Relations 135 

would have been greatly lessened if it had been 
known that mutual recognition in that glad mo- 
ment would be impossible. And the apostle's in- 
cidental mention of the whole family (or every 
family) in heaven and on earth (Eph. iii. 15) rep- 
resents the children of God as bound together by 
the closest of all social ties. 

Indeed, such communion of saints in the Inter- 
mediate State must surely be expected, if it is a 
condition of fellowship with God. Those who are 
united to Him are united to one another; if Christ 
is the head, they are the body, and members one 
of another. The likeness of God to whom they 
are drawn with an ever-growing love will be re- 
flected, also in the lives of those around them, and 
must attract them. If two comets widely separ- 
ated in space were at the same time drawn into 
the sphere of the powerful gravitation of the sun 
and began to move toward it, they would con- 
stantly come nearer to one another; and when two 
souls, however unlike in capacity and taste, make 
Jesus the center about which their lives revolve 
and approach ever nearer to Him, they will grow 
into a likeness to one another, and a mutual un- 
derstanding and sympathy, which is the basis of 
friendship. We must believe that those whom we 



136 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

" have loved and lost a while " have made vast 
progress in capacity for the communion of saints. 

We can hardly conceive how human spirits, 
though redeemed and glorified, could resist the 
natural craving for companionship. Great changes 
will, to be sure, be involved in the freedom from 
sin, and from that which is earthly and fleshly, 
which, as we believe, will be granted to the re- 
deemed at death ; but we must hold to this, that 
the essential natures with which we are endowed 
will still be the same, at a higher stage of devel- 
opment and perfection. Surely then we shall re- 
tain those instincts and capacities which make us 
social beings, for that these are not evil in them- 
selves is manifest not only in their beneficent in- 
fluence in general, but especially in that they were 
a notable feature of the perfect character of Jesus. 
Our social natures will demand satisfaction in the 
life beyond the grave. It is true that they will 
find it in fellowship with God, but such fellowship 
must, by its nature, also extend to those who bear 
His image. 

Furthermore, memory must undoubtedly sur- 
vive the separation of the soul from the body, for 
it is an indispensable part of our power to think, 
and the basic truth upon which emphasis has been 



Social Relations 137 

laid in these pages is that in the Intermediate State 
we shall continue to be intelligent thinking beings : 
but the memory of dear friends and sacred friend- 
ships cannot but produce a longing for which some 
satisfaction must be provided. 

But this consideration introduces a problem. If 
separation of the evil from the good occurs at 
death, and if the saved retain the social natures 
and the memories by which souls are bound to- 
gether, will not the bliss of Paradise be marred 
by the recollection of dear ones who rejected the 
mercy of God and are not to be found among His 
chosen? Will there not be a sense of loss which 
will be all the deeper when the affections are puri- 
fied from the dross of earth, and so made stronger 
and more sensitive? The difficulty is involved in 
any conception of immortality which assumes that 
destiny is determined in accordance with moral 
character, unless it be admitted that the godlike 
power to reason and think, which carries memory 
with it, will be lost — and that would in effect be 
the denial of immortality. The real question goes 
farther back. It is, How can a God of infinite 
love bear the loss of any of his creatures? The 
highest and most unselfish human affection is but 
a beam from that great sun; and yet somehow the 



138 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

love that passeth knowledge made men free, and 
permits them to suffer the consequences of their 
free choice. It is a phase of the unfathomable 
mystery of the origin of evil in a universe which 
belongs to God. In this region we can only be- 
lieve, where we cannot prove; but there is at least 
a satisfaction for our thought when we can sink 
the smaller problem in this which is so much larger. 
We can be sure that He who so loved the world 
that He gave His only-begotten Son to redeem it, 
cannot be unkind to any of His creatures, and that 
the reasons which can make Him endure the loss 
of those who reject His grace, will satisfy the 
weaker affection of the redeemed. 

This thought then that the spirits of just men 
made perfect form an organized society in which 
the ideal of the Kingdom of God is attained and 
is yet being progressively realized more and more, 
opens before us a boundless prospect. 1 An age in 
which the aim of reformers is social welfare, in 
which the more advanced political leaders have 
adopted as their battlecry " social justice," and in 
which as never before it is seen that if Christianity 
is to be true to the purposes of its divine founder 

1 See William Adams Brown, The Christian Hope, 
pp. 196 ff. 



Social Relations 139 

it must aim at the social salvation of every com- 
munity as well as the conversion of every indi- 
vidual, has surely not got beyond the need of im- 
mortality, if, as is here maintained, immortality 
means satisfaction of our highest social aspirations 
and the chance for unending social development. 
The faith that believes that man can be saved to 
the uttermost by the mercy of God, that sends for- 
eign missionaries to the most distant and degraded 
races, that keeps devoted workers toiling cheer- 
fully in the sordid surroundings of the slums, 
that inspires the philanthropist to make large plans 
for the betterment of conditions among those who 
perhaps show him little gratitude, and that ex- 
presses itself in the patient endeavors of many an 
obscure worker in country, hamlet, or city, will, 
for aught we know, receive not only triumphant 
vindication in the life beyond, but new tasks to 
perform in that celestial social organization in 
which, even though sin be banished, improvement 
and growth will always be possible. The New Je- 
rusalem is a city, the very type of united and eager 
activity, of organization, of business. 



XIV 
KNOWLEDGE OF EARTH 



141 



Do we indeed desire the dead 

Should still be near us at our side? 

Is there no baseness we would hide? 
No inner vileness that we dread? 



I wrong the grave with fears untrue. 

Shall love be blamed for want of faith? 

There must be wisdom with great Death; 
The dead shall look me thro* and thro'. 

Be near us when we climb or fall; 

Ye watch, like God, the rolling hours 
With larger other eyes than ours, 

To make allowance for us all. 

Tennyson 



142 



XIV 

KNOWLEDGE OF EARTH 

The question whether the dead have knowledge 
of what occurs on earth and are interested in the 
lives of their friends here, has always had great 
fascination for some minds. The ancestor worship 
which is the basis of certain cults, the custom of 
consulting familiar spirits which in ancient times 
was so common that it is specially forbidden 
in the Old Testament, the Roman Catholic doc- 
trines of Purgatory and of the Invocation of 
the Saints, and modern spiritism, — all assume 
that a certain measure of intercourse between 
souls embodied and disembodied is possible. Those 
who have been bereaved often feel an unut- 
terable longing for some fellowship with the 
departed. There are others who shrink with some- 
thing akin to horror from the idea, perhaps influ- 
enced consciously or unconsciously by superstitious 
feeling concerning ghosts and haunted houses. But 
if we could divest ourselves of the unreal and the 
weird and the tragic associations which have been 
fostered by tradition and song and story, we 

143 



144 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

should find happiness in the conviction that " the 
saints who from their labors rest " are nearer than 
they seem. 

Scripture data do not perhaps warrant a definite 
conclusion on this matter. Some expressions in 
the Old Testament, indeed, seem to affirm that no 
such acquaintance with mundane affairs is possible 
in the Intermediate State. Thus Job says, " His 
sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; and 
they are brought low, but he perceiveth it not of 
them" (Job xiv. 21). Still more hopeless is this 
statement in the Book of Ecclesiastes, " For the 
living know that they, shall die ; but the dead know 
not any thing, neither have they any more a re- 
ward ; for the memory of them is forgotten. As 
well their love, as their hatred and their envy, is 
perished long ago ; neither have they any more a 
portion forever in any thing that is done under 
the sun" (Eccles. ix. 5-6). These are of a piece 
with other passages in which even remembrance 
of God is said to fail in the underworld. But if 
the position advocated at the beginning of this 
discussion be adopted, we do not in such places 
have the real constructive teaching of the Old 
Testament regarding immortality; they are based 
on the old conception of Sheol which was not so 



Knowledge of Earth 145 

much a part of revelation, as a doctrine against 
which revelation fought and which it finally over- 
came. 

On the other hand, there are some hints which 
encourage the hope that the blessed dead watch 
the course of events here, even though such hints 
are not enough to establish dogma. Moses and 
Elijah on the Mount of Transfiguration talk of 
" His decease which He was about to accomplish 
at Jerusalem" (Luke ix. 31) as if they had all 
along been interested in the preparation for re- 
demption. We like to think that the joy in the 
presence of the angels of God over one sinner that 
repenteth (Luke xv. 10) is shared by the spirits 
of the just. Two other passages are by many 
thought to be still more in point. The first reads, 
" Therefore let us also, seeing we are compassed 
about with so great a cloud of witnesses, lay aside 
every weight, and the sin which doth so easily be- 
set us, and let us run with patience the race that 
is set before us" (Heb. xii. 1). The struggle of 
the Christian Life is here likened to one of the 
old games, and the motive urged is that a great 
assemblage of the faithful fills the amphitheater. 
This " cloud of witnesses " consists of the Old 
Testament saints whose faith is celebrated in the 



146 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

preceding chapter. The word by which they are 
described is perhaps to be taken in the sense of 
witnesses for God rather than in that of specta- 
tors of the race, though this is not certain. 1 The 
scene that is sketched, however, represents these 
heroes of faith as onlookers, even though the point 
may be " not that they behold us, but that we be- 
hold them." 2 Doubtless " a writer of scripture 
may be allowed to throw out a brilliant ideal con- 
ception, without our tying him down to having 
uttered a formal doctrine " 3 ; but there would at 
least seem to be here enough to encourage hope, 
if not to establish dogma. 

The other passage to which appeal is often made 
is this, "And when he opened the fifth seal, I saw 
underneath the altar the souls of them that had 
been slain for the word of God, and for the testi- 
mony which they held : and they cried with a great 
voice, saying, How long, O Master, the holy and 
true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on 
them that dwell on the earth? And there was 
given them to each one a white robe ; and it was 
said unto them, that they should rest yet for a lit- 

1 Ct the usage in 1 Tim. vi. 12. 

2 A. B. Davidson, Hebrews, p. 233. 

3 Ibid., p. 233. 



Knowledge of Earth 147 

tie time, until their fellow-servants also and their 
brethren, who should be killed even as they were, 
should have fulfilled their course" (Rev. vi. 9-11). 
The inference drawn from these words is that the 
martyrs know how things fare on the earth, and 
await their own vindication there. But manifestly 
we have here highly figurative language. The 
souls are represented as under the altar because 
in the old ritual the blood of the sacrifices was 
poured at its foot; it is this blood which, like that 
of Abel, cries for vengeance. It is doubtful 
whether such a representation in this apocalyptic 
book is intended to give any teaching as to the 
condition of spirits in the Intermediate State. 

It would seem then that even if the Bible gives 
no very definite revelation as to the relation of the 
blessed dead to mundane affairs, there is at least 
sufficient ground for faith and hope. 1 There are, 
indeed, many who hold that the belief in the near- 
ness of the departed and their interest in those 
that are left behind, has been confirmed by mod- 
ern investigations. Psychical research attempts to 

1 1 have not mentioned Saul's interview with the 
witch of Endor (1 Sam. xxviii.). It was probably an 
ordinary spiritistic seance.; In ver. 12a read Saul, in- 
stead of Samuel, with certain MSS. of the Septuagint. 
So Perles, Budde, Nowack, Kennedy. 



148 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

approach such questions without prejudice from a 
strictly scientific point of view ; and such remark- 
able men as Alfred Russel Wallace, William T. 
Stead, and Sir Oliver Lodge have been convinced 
that genuine communications have been received 
from the spirit world, while Professor William 
James seems to have been almost persuaded. 
These experiments have not brought conviction to 
the common man. The alleged communications 
have usually been so insignificant or so fatuous 
that they show no traces of the wisdom of great 
Death. Furthermore, it is hard to believe that 
the pure and ethereal souls of the saints would 
choose as their means of communication persons 
of such character as the average mediums, who 
are notorious for trickery and deception, and 
whose seances, in darkened rooms and uncanny 
surroundings, breathe an atmosphere anything but 
heavenly. 

That certain spiritistic phenomena are most ex- 
traordinary and almost inexplicable is not to be 
gainsaid. That even the most astonishing of them 
can be explained on the theory of thought trans- 
ference, is held by good authorities. It is in this 
realm, I think, that the important contributions of 
psychical research to the doctrine of immortality 



Knowledge of Earth 149 

have been made. It has been shown that even in 
this present life the spirit has powers whose ex- 
tent has not yet been explored; that though in 
the body it can on extraordinary occasions break 
through the limits of the flesh and speak, across 
space, to some loved one; that especially in time 
of danger or death, signals are sometimes sent 
from soul to soul, though oceans and continents 
separate them. It is surely then to be expected 
that the immaterial side can exist alone and show 
new capacities. And so it is extremely probable 
that the departed, with their vaster knowledge and 
insight, are not ignorant of the affairs of earth nor 
lacking in interest in them. 

It may be that in certain moods we revolt at 
such a thought. There may be things in our lives 
which we would fain hide from our beloved dead. 

" Shall lie for whose applause I strove, 
I had such reverence for his blame, 
See with clear eyes some hidden shame 
And I be lessen'd in his love?" 1 

It is true that knowledge beyond the grave must 

still be finite; but if glorified saints know us who 

remain behind at all, they probably know us much 

more completely than we know one another, and 
1 Tennyson, " In Memoriam," li. 



150 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

can, for aught we can say, detect the faults that 
are concealed from our closest friends. And if 
they see how feeble is our Christian service, how 
half-hearted our struggles against temptation, how 
frequent our defeats, how overwhelming our falls, 
will not the bliss of heaven be spoiled for them 
by our backslidings ? 

But in opposition to such questionings it is to 
be considered that the increase in holiness and wis- 
dom on the other side must mean also increase in 
patience and tolerance. Surely no man ever made 
such allowance for weakness and failure as the 
perfect man Jesus, whose pity and sympathy, spot- 
less as his life was, constantly attracted to him 
publicans and harlots and outcasts. We may well 
believe that those who have at last won His like- 
ness will share His tenderness toward the erring, 
and will, while their love and compassion are 
deeply engaged for us in life's struggle, have His 
serene confidence in the ultimate issue, and, like 
Him, they will certainly have a joy which cannot 
be taken from them even by the faithlessness of 
some to whom they were bound by the closest of 
earthly ties. 

It is a far cry from this position to the teaching 
which holds that departed saints can intercede for 



Knowledge of Earth 151 

their friends on earth, and elevates invocation of 
them, especially of the mother of Jesus, into a 
dogma and a system. Suppose it should be ad- 
mitted that they can know our situations and pre- 
sent our needs before the throne, shall we cherish 
such unworthy thoughts of God as to believe that 
He can be approached only through the interven- 
tion of these mediators? Is He so distant or so 
implacable that we dare not come to Him directly 
for ourselves and those we love? Whatever may 
be the truth as to the necessity or the possibility 
of prayer beyond this life — and there is surely no 
reason to think that we shall ever get beyond the 
need of it, at least in the aspects of adoration 
and fellowship with God — dependence upon such 
assistance from glorified spirits is unnecessary. 
There is one mediator, the exalted Jesus, who ever 
liveth to make intercession for us, and who has 
the most perfect sympathy because He was in all 
points tempted like as we are. If God is far off 
and hostile, we may need such friends at court. 
But if God is love and is reconciling the world 
unto Himself in Christ, we may go to Him with 
boldness. The practice in question proceeds upon 
the implication that the atonement and interces- 
sion of the Saviour are insufficient. And, as might 



152 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

be expected, one of its lamentable results has been 
to exalt the saints and the Madonna until, in the 
minds of many, they displace the Master himself. 
Concealed though it may be under specious names, 
this is really idolatry. 



XV 
THE PLACE OF GLORY 



153 



I know ,not where His islands lift 

Their fronded palms in air; 
I only know I cannot drift 

Beyond His love and care. 

Whittier. 



154 



XV 

THE PLACE OF GLORY 

In a little volume of essays entitled " Sabbath 
Hours," Professor Austin Phelps, referring to 
our instinctive sense of the unreality of an exist- 
ence apart from the body and our consequent re- 
luctance in spite of the immortal hope to quit these 
clay tabernacles, expresses the view that the bless- 
ings of the future would seem more tangible, if 
emphasis were given to the prospect that there 
will be a place for the redeemed. We have long 
been taught that heaven is a state of mind, and 
this certainly is a fundamental truth ; perhaps too 
exclusive insistence upon it has taken from our 
conception of the life beyond the grave something 
of its power to attract us. It is hard for us crea- 
tures of time and space to understand conditions 
so entirely unlike those amidst which we are now 
placed. Possibly they are not, after all, so dif- 
ferent as we suppose. It is comforting to think 
that the sainted dead are still true human beings, 
having undergone only such changes as are in- 

155 



156 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

volved in leaving behind the sinful and the fleshly 
and the earthly. 

Is there then a place set apart for those who are 
in the Intermediate State? Can a pure spirit be 
limited to any particular part of space? The soul 
has no length nor breadth nor thickness; and 
terms intended to describe the dimensions or spa- 
tial relations of such a substance really mean noth- 
ing. But perhaps this is not the final word in the 
matter for two reasons; because it is not at all 
certain that there will not be, even in the Inter- 
mediate State, some house not made with hands, 
some building of God, which though ethereal may 
not be wholly immaterial, and which, as the dwell- 
ing of the unseen personality, may confine it to 
some region of bliss ; and because, even if the phi- 
losophy of Idealism be accepted, it must, I should 
suppose, be admitted that, separated from the body, 
we must still think under the forms of time and 
space just as we do here, and such thinking would 
seem to involve the sense of spatial relation to 
some spot in the universe. Probably nothing, 
therefore, in the nature of things, forbids us to 
harbor such an expectation. 

In the Bible there are such indications as these: 
Jesus said to the disciples, " I go to prepare a 



The Place of Glory 157 

place for you" (John xiv. 2), though the words 
which follow seem to fix the bestowal of the place 
at His return in glory, and consequently after the 
Intermediate State ; the promise to the dying thief 
is that he shall be with the Master in Paradise — 
which word, originally meaning a park, was some- 
times applied to the garden of Eden, and then, as 
Paul's usage shows, to the third heaven itself 1 
(Luke xxiii. 43; 2 Cor. xii. 2-4) ; Lazarus is car- 
ried to Abraham's bosom, and the rich man lifts 
up his eyes in Hades (Luke xvi. 19 fT.) ; while of 
Judas the ominous words are used, " That he 
might go to his own place" (Acts i. 25). Per- 
haps all these statements are capable of a figur- 
ative interpretation, but a more literal explanation 
is quite as suitable, and is likely in itself. Add to 
this that the glorified body of Jesus which disap- 
peared in the clouds from the view of the disciples 
must surely have a place of dwelling, and where 
He is, His own, it is promised, shall be with Him. 
There has been endless speculation on the loca- 
tion of the home of blessed spirits. In Old Testa- 
ment times, the common view, partly traditional and 
partly poetic, appears to have been that Sheol was 
under the earth. Heaven is usually thought of in 
1 Cf. also the Book of the Secrets of Enoch. 



158 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

modern times as above us. Some suppose that 
the center of gravity of the whole universe, for 
which scientists have been seeking though they are 
not sure that it exists, may be the place where the 
spirits of just men made perfect dwell with the 
Master. Leaving these uncertainties, there is one 
truth to which the devout heart may cling, that in 
the vast reaches of creation the God of love can 
find abundant room for His redeemed, and that 
His presence and fellowship will make any place 
glorious. 

That there is some special abode of the soul 
might be argued from the longings which we 
already feel. We grow attached to places, we 
wreathe them with garlands of memories, and 
one of the things that makes us loath to leave this 
earth is the thought that we can no longer revisit 
the scenes that we have loved so long. In ancient 
times it was considered an enormity to leave the 
dead unburied, because it was supposed that the 
spirit must wander homeless until the body was 
given the rites of sepulture. Perhaps the feeling 
that was expressed in such legends, and on the 
other hand the love of the very stones and trees 
of certain spots that are sacred to us, — longings 
which in themselves are certainly not essentially 



The Place of Glory 159 

sinful, but rather noble and beautiful, — are a 
foretaste and promise of higher pleasures of the 
same kind in the many mansions of the Father's 
house. 

But even if the sense of place survives in the 
hereafter, we are hardly to think of the spirit as 
rooted to a single location. Some special home it 
may have, and for all that, it is credible that it 
may range through the universe in the high ser- 
vice of heaven, growing in knowledge, and in 
power through its experiences, and constantly find- 
ing new sources of enjoyment. If in our present 
state much of the best culture and pleasure may 
be gained in travel, who knows but that in the life 
beyond the grave joys similar in kind but higher 
in degree await us, when perhaps the wonders of 
distant suns and planets will be explored and the 
vast universe of God will be studied with higher 
faculties than we now possess? 



XVI 
RETROSPECT 



161 



Yet Love will dream, and Faith will trust, 

(Since He who knows our need is just,) 

That somehow, somewhere, meet we must. 

Alas for him who never sees 

The stars shine through his cypress-trees! 

Who hopeless, lays his dead away, 

Nor looks to see the breaking day 

Across the mournful marbles play! 

Who hath not learned, in hours of faith, 

The Truth to flesh and sense unknown, 
That life is ever lord of Death, 

And love can never lose its own! 

Whittiee. 



162 



XVI 

RETROSPECT 

A criticism that may very readily be made 
upon any such discussion as the foregoing, is that 
so many of the positions are of necessity merely 
conjectural. Is there any certain doctrine of the 
Intermediate State? Are the Biblical data a suf- 
ficient basis for a systematic statement on the mat- 
ter? It is surely to be hoped that these questions 
can be answered in the affirmative; for, if the im- 
mortal life and the future resurrection of the body 
are realities, then those who have fallen asleep 
during the long ages, have been and still are in 
the Intermediate State, and our inquiry is one 
which all men make when they ask, " How fares 
it with the blessed dead ? " Patriarchs and proph- 
ets, apostles and saints, confessors and martyrs — 
can we know nothing at all as to their present 
state? We refuse to believe this, since Jesus has 
brought life and immortality to light. 

It is conceded that for some of the views ex- 
pressed in this book it can only be urged that they 
are probable. The subject is not one on which 

163 



164 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

mathematical demonstration is possible. For full 
knowledge we must wait till we pass within the 
veil. But it is submitted that the fundamental 
propositions herein advocated are so woven into 
the warp and woof of inspiration that they cannot 
be torn out of it without marring the whole fabric. 

These fundamental truths may be stated in a 
few words : that the soul lives on in conscious, per- 
sonal existence ; that at death its character is fixed, 
and that it is dealt with on the basis of character, 
under grace, and is granted a reward or suffers 
punishment ; that it will be engaged in spiritual 
activities and will have capacity and opportunity, 
if it be on the upward course, for constant prog- 
ress ; and that it will have fellowship with God, 
with angels, and with other redeemed spirits 
like itself. These are essential positions for which, 
amid much that is doubtful, we make bold to con- 
tend. 

But it will be noted that these are, in the main, 
the doctrines which Protestantism has long main- 
tained and has expressed in her symbols. The 
gist of the statements above is contained in these 
words from the Westminster Shorter Catechism, 
" The souls of believers are at their death made 
perfect in holiness and do immediately pass into 



Retrospect 165 

glory, and their bodies, being still united to Christ, 
do rest in their graves till the resurrection." These 
views then are in no sense novelties. 

But the question may be asked, If the Interme- 
diate State means all this, what real difference can 
the resurrection of the body and the final judg- 
ment make? If, when they enter this preliminary 
condition, the redeemed have already attained per- 
fect sinlessness and are at once ushered into unut- 
terable bliss, what more can be granted to them 
at the consummation of the age? Is not heaven 
in the full meaning of it won at death? 

This seems to me to be essentially the truth of 
the matter; that the difference between the Inter- 
mediate and the Eternal State is chiefly one of de- 
grees of progress and blessedness. If we must 
insist that the New Testament teachings on the 
resurrection of the body mean something more 
than the immortality of the soul, and that the Last 
Judgment will crown the work of the Redeemer 
and vindicate the redeemed in the sight of the uni- 
verse, we may nevertheless hold that these august 
occurrences will only heighten a blessedness that 
has been long in possession and accelerate a prog- 
ress which was already in full course. I suppose 
that there must be the same power to think and to 



166 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

love, the same holiness of life, the same opportu- 
nity for high service, the same capacity for growth 
in grace and knowledge, the same utter devotion 
to the triune God and the same fellowship with 
Him and with blessed spirits — the same in kind 
if not in degree — in the one period as in the other. 
The endowment with the spiritual body and the 
appearance before the Great Assize will only, as I 
take it, be a great step in the upward course. 

Such a future for the soul might be expected, 
reasoning from the analogy of life on earth. Prog- 
ress is made sometimes by slow growth, sometimes 
by leaps and bounds. The process of redemption 
and glorification begins here. Now are we the 
sons of God. A great crisis of advancement comes, 
we must believe, when the spirit passes through 
the gate of death; but for those who have been 
saved by the Cross, the direction in which the 
whole man is moving, is not changed. We may 
well suppose that another mighty step forward, 
whose significance we can very dimly appre- 
hend, will be taken when the graves give up their 
precious dust and the ethereal soul is fitly clothed 
with the spiritual body; but surely there will be 
no break with the past. Heaven must mean eter- 
nal progress. 



INDEX 

Activity, 108 ff. 
Anabaptists, 27. 
Arnold, Sir Edwin, 96. 
Assumption of Moses, The, 101. 
Augustine, St., 65, 99. 
Beet, J. Agar, 63. 
Beethoven, Ludwig van, 109. 
Bernard, St., of Clairvaux, 65. 

Body, The, at the Resurrection, 4ff.; in the Interme- 
diate State, 40 ff. 
Briggs, Charles A., 50. 
Brown, William Adams, 138. 
Browning, Robert, 2, 63, 74, 124. 
Bruce, A. B., 79. 
Budde, Karl, 147. 
Bull, George, 46. 
Bunyan, John, 60. 
Calvin, John, 27, 65, 98. 
Catechism, Westminster Shorter, 164 f. 
Catholic Encyclopedia, 83 f., 91. 
Charles, R. H., 48, 53. 
Cicero, Marcus Tullius, 31. 
Consciousness after Death, 19 ff. 
Crystallization in Character, 52 ff. 
Dante, Alighieri, 83. 
Davidson, A. B., 14, 15, 146. 
Driver, S. R., 73. 
Dods, Marcus, 62. 
Edwards, Jonathan, 65. 
Enoch, Book of, 100, 101. 
Enoch, II (Book of Secrets of), 61, 100 f., 157. 

167 



168 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Erskine, of Linlathen, 28. 

Faber, F. W., 70. 

Faith, 78. 

Francis, St., of Assisi, 65. 

Gaussen, Francis, 27 f. 

Gibbons, Cardinal James, 85. 

Gladstone, William E., 121. 

Harris, J. Rendel, 101, 102. 

Hodge, Charles, 7, 90. 

Hunkin, J. W., 87. 

Hutton, R. H., 7, 46 f., 50. 

Introduction, 2 ff. 

Invocation of the Saints, 143, 150 ff. 

James, William, 34 f., 37, 58, 148. 

Jubilees, Book of, 100. 

Kennedy, A. R. S., 147. 

Kingdom of Heaven, The, 131 f. 

Kipling, Rudyard, 108. 

Knowledge of Earth, 142 ff. 

Lodge, Sir Oliver, 148. 

Lowell, James Russell, 52. 

Luckock, H. M., 88. 

Luther, Martin, 27, 65, 93. 

Macaulay, T. B., 109, 121. 

Mackintosh, H. R., 58. 

Martensen, Bishop H. L., 42 f., 46, 50. 

Marti, Karl, 73. 

Memory, 136 ff. 

Millennial Controversies, 3. 

Moffatt, James, 102. 

Moody, Dwight L., 121. 

Newman, Cardinal John Henry, 40, 42, 43, 82, 91. 

Nowack, W., 73, 147. 

Oehler, G. F., 13. 

Perles, Joseph, 147. 



Index 169 



Phelps, Austin, 155. 

Place of Glory, The, 154 ff. 

Prayers for the Dead, 85 ff. 

Progress, 120 ff., 165 f. 

Psychical Research, 147 ff. 

Purgatory, 82 ff., 143. 

Pusey, E. B., 90. 

Resurrection, 4 ff., 45. 

Retrospect, 162 ff. 

Rewards and Punishments, 60 ff. 

Sadducees, 23. 

Salmond, S. D. F., 15, 99, 101, 102, 105. 

Schiller, F. C. S., 35. 

Schwally, Friedrich, 14. 

Second Advent, 16, 22, 29, 48, 49, 104, 110. 

Shakespeare, William, 26. 

Sheol, 11 ff., 19 f., 23, 32, 77, 133, 144 f., 157. 

Smith, David, 27, 28, 79. 

Smith, George Adam, 73. 

Social Relations, 130 ff. 

Socrates, 78. 

Soul-sleeping, 26 ff. 

Sources, 10 ff. 

Speer, R. E., 75, 76, 77. 

Spiritism, 143, 147 ff. 

Spirits in Prison, The, 96 ff. 

Stead, W. T., 148. 

Stevens, George Barker, 99. 

Stier, Rudolf, 46. 

Strong, A. H., 7, 78 f. 

Tennyson, Lord Alfred, 10, 18, 120, 142, 149. 

Tetzel, John, 93. 

Thomson, William Hanna, 36, 114, 115. 

Vastness of Redemption, The, 70 ff. 

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 148. 



170 Spirits of Just Men Made Perfect 

Wellhausen, Julius, 73. 
Wesley, John, 65. 
Whately, Archbishop Richard, 28. 
Whittier, John G., 154, 162. 
Wordsworth, William, 130. 
Wright, C. H. H., 87. 



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